These Roads We Walk
by Voracious
Summary: For Jezra, a vanquished foe only sheds new light on a falsely smiling face. For Twen, the silence after adventure is only allowing the echoes of loss to become deafening. And for one lurking evil, both women are ripe for the picking.
1. Prologue What Man Hath Wrought

These Roads We Walk - Prologue

"How're ye?"

Sitting on the steps, Jezra didn't bother to reply, scowling down at the scuffed toes of her boots as though they had done something to offend her. With a sigh, Tomi Undergallows settled down beside her, stretching his legs out elaborately. "Me, I ain't doin' so hot." he went on as though she'd responded. "I mean, aye, ye got yer lasses swoonin' left and right, don't ye, but ye can't do anything about it 'cause they wanna parade ye like some moonstruck pig through the streets and the like, bards goin' on and on. Normally, ye know, I'd enjoy it, but they just don't wanna stop and let me enjoy meself." He glanced at her. She didn't look up.

The silence ran out between them, and the sounds of the docks rushed to fill it. It was as though the city were slowly coming to life again. The militia were still uncovering the bases used by Aribeth's army, and the waning sunlight glinted off tarnished and bent chainmail as they marched grimly from building to building, clusters of solemn-faced family members watching them from street corners and waiting for the all-clear that seemed to be so long in coming. The last of the fires had long since been extinguished, and nearby, a crew of sweating, tired workers was slowly hauling away the inanimate hulk of a war golem. The broad, unfeeling face was turned in Tomi's direction and he shuddered involuntarily.

The march through the streets had been more or less of a joke. "For morale," Nasher had said, although Tomi had seen few smiles on the stained and gaunt faces that had bothered to turn out into the streets to watch the victory procession. Even the children that had clung to skirts or hands were silent, cheeks tear-stained through the grime. They had lost far more than they could rebuild, families and lovers torn asunder by the bloody path of war. Those people, who had watched him blankly, had listened to Nasher's speech about the rebuilding of Neverwinter, but they hadn't cared; whatever glories lay in Neverwinter's future were badges of honour for the city walls to wear, pointless glittering things that looked fine on a mantel to be boasted of at dinner parties, but that wouldn't bring life back to those whose bodies had all but been eradicated in the carnage.

After a while, Tomi had abandoned his own strained smile and had merely stared ahead in silence.

Jezra was unmoving beside him, dark head bent forward, chin resting on the arms crossed over her knees. Her silence bothered him more than anything; Jezra had always been such a polar opposite of the ideal "hero", part of what he liked about her being her brash, loud, usually self-serving nature. He had never known her to be without something to say in the few months they'd travelled together tracking down Neverwinter's enemies, even if it was just loudly yelling with her arms folded, stubbornly refusing to see an opposing point of view. How often had they hefted their coin purses around the fire at night, exchanged gleeful looks at the weight, plotted wild ideas for the spending of the future wealth they would find dropped in their laps when they were finally hailed as heroes?

He knew what was bothering her, however. He didn't want to bring it up, didn't want to admit how much it had been gnawing at the back of his own mind. _That _wasn't the Tomi he knew himself to be, someone who wrung his hands and fretted over the fate of others stupid enough not to fatten their funds to cushion an inevitable fall. It bothered him.

Nodding at the small pack leaning against Jezra, Tomi said, "Headin' off, are ye?" His nerves prickled when she remained silent, but he forged gamely on anyway. "Aye, ye know, I was thinkin' of that meself, after I've had enough of the swank setup they gave me back at the castle. Ye know, I ain't never had a bed that soft I wasn't seducin' some countess outta first." He chuckled.

Jezra said nothing.

He frowned at her. She was a small woman, although she was still easily two heads taller than he, small and scrappy with skin tanned dark by sun and bruised by wind. Her face seemed more given to sly grins, smug smiles; not the granite-set expression of irritation and dull hurt she wore now. "Did ye see her?" he asked grudgingly, rankled by her silence and his own worry.

She shifted on the steps, leathers creaking softly. "I did."

"And?"

Jezra didn't respond immediately. She scrubbed a hand through her close-cropped hair, and when she looked up finally there was only tired defeat in her eyes. "She wouldn't let me help."

He hadn't expected any less. "What'd ye do?"

"I told her they were gonna kill her." As still as she sat, her hands were restless, toying with one another and wrestling themselves into such strained positions he wanted to wince watching. "She said she knew. She knew and she was still gonna stay."

"And what did ye say?"

Jezra's eyes dropped to the ground between them. "Nothing. I didn't wanna plead, ye know? I figured, she's gonna turn down gettin' busted outta there, knowin' what's gonna happen . . . she's already given up, yeah?"

Tomi sat awkwardly, at an uncustomary loss for words. If Jezra had been just another face passing in the crowd, another temporary face around the campfire, he could have settled things with a 'Things'll be allright, love' and a bit of a wink. Part of him still wanted to, still wanted to try to shrug off the seriousness of the situation, the pall that had settled over the both of them ever since they'd returned to the city. "M'sorry." he said instead, quietly.

She shook her head slowly. "All that time she was shoutin' for righteousness and justice, ye know, I never thought mebbe she was still hurtin'. I knew she was angry, yeah, and that's fine. Bein' angry gives ye somethin' t'do. But when yer hurtin' . . . when yer hurtin', all ye wanna do is just lay down and die. And I thought, mebbe if I'd talked to her some, ye know, after they . . . after they hung him, like they did, instead of rollin' me eyes when she was givin' her directions, mebbe I coulda helped, yeah?" She frowned again, looked up almost challengingly at him. "I ain't nobody's sappy sister, least of all hers, but . . . I didn't talk her into comin' back here just so she could play martyr."

Tomi reached out, intending to slap her on the back companionably, then let his hand falter back down to his side instead. "Ye wanna go back?"

"I don't . . . no." She rubbed angrily at something in the corner of her eye, sniffed loudly and stood up before he could see what it was, making a show of straightening her clothes and almost obsessively wiping the grime from them. "I don't know where I wanna go, but it ain't back there. I _am _headin' out, yeah."

He pushed himself to his feet. "Ye tell anyone?"

She looked at him. "No. They'll find out. Ye stayin'?"

"Aye. Y'know, for a li'l while, at least." He smiled slightly. "Wish ye would . . . but I know ye can't." In an effort to dispell the oddly stilted mood, Tomi stretched elaborately, tilting his head back. A lone gull wheeled crying above their heads, and he pointed up at it with a trace of his old grin. "I heard some sailor sayin' them things're good luck for voyages."

"Not if ye happen t'be lookin' up while they're flyin' o'erhead." she replied. They both laughed too hard at the joke, weak as it was, but when they'd stopped, some of the stoop was gone from her shoulders. She tilted her head to the side and smiled; Tomi ignored how effort-intensive it looked. "I guess I'll be seein' ye, yeah?"

"Aye. Ye wanna watch yer purse then. I'll look ye up, don't ye worry. All I need t'do is follow the cursin' and the blue air, aye?"

She reached out and took his hand suddenly, her grip tightening with startling intensity. "Listen," she said, face sombre again, "when they . . . when it happens . . . when they do . . . it . . . if yer still here . . . don't go and watch. If we meet up again some day, I don't wanna look at ye and know ye saw it happen. I'll see it in yer eyes."

For an instant, something inside Tomi rebelled, refused what she was saying. _Come off it, _it seemed to be scoffing weakly, one arm thrown over his shoulder in a let's-be-chums sort of way, a bit of desperation in the grin in it's voice, _it ain't gonna happen, not in a million years, naw. _

It would have been nice to listen to it.

He would have been able to, too, if he hadn't seen the curiously grim look on Nasher's face when they'd returned, heard the whispered rumours in the corridors . . . remembered what had happened to Fenthick. He tried for another smile, and knew from how it felt how false it must have looked. "Ye don't . . . have to worry about that. Okay?" He squeezed her hand once before gently extracting his own from her grip. "I'll be seein' ye, like ye said."

Jezra Luiellen dipped her head and smiled once, faintly. In that single motion he read more about the mark that had been left on her than if she had tried for a fortnight to put it into words. She hoisted the pack easily onto her shoulders, settling it into place with a practiced motion. "Aye, ye will. Keep yer nose clean, hafling."

When she had vanished around the corner, Tomi found himself setting off in the opposite direction. A part of him couldn't believe he was going back to that place, to sleep in that bed, knowing what he might hear had happened come morning, lauded in the streets like some sort of obscene victory by the town criers.

There was a chance they would all realise how stupid it was, of course. How out-and-out starkers. It wasn't likely, but there was _always _a chance.

_So, _he thought, wetting his lips as the wind picked up and stirred the ghostly rustle of debris across the street, deserted now save for the occasional flickering light of a distant patrolman, _what the hell do I do now_?

----------

Elsewhere.

----------

Twen hit the ground painfully, spat out from the void like a child rudely thrust too early from the womb. For an instant, she felt a tremendous pressure on her back, like a hand pressing firmly between her delicate shoulderblades, and she couldn't draw breath. Her heart hammered in alarm, making the haze of dim colours and shapes her mind offered up as memories spin sickeningly inside her head. Then, just as suddenly as she had found herself dropped, it was gone, and she was gasping in great lungfuls of stagnant air, spitting out the cobwebs and dust that entered her mouth.

With an effort, she heaved herself over onto her back, ignoring the way the movement made her head swim. She couldn't seem to make her thoughts connect; they spun disjointed inside her mind, meaningless fragments pushed apart by the dull throb of pain when they attempted to collide. Right now, where she was seemed only distantly important compared to knowing her body was mostly intact. Judging from the choir of aches and twinges from what seemed like every inch of her skin, she thought it was.

She remembered, of course.

She remembered the terrifying kilt of the ground beneath her feet as Undrentide had begun to crumble, the power that sustained it severed by blade and spell. She remembered the vegeful shriek of the medusa Heurodis, clawed hands spinning her to look into the blind, enraged face, skin stretched taut in a scream of pure hatred, before Twen had felt herself yanked away. She remembered as well the Door looming before her, all courage suddenly gone in the need for survival as her hand had closed around the chilled handle, tearing it open and plunging desperately inwards, an enormous flash searing her eyes and making her cry out in pain and astonishment.

Between then and now?

Nothing.

Her robes felt torn and tangled around her legs as she tried to set up, and her arms tingled painfully as though she had slept on them for days. The ground was mercifully, blessedly still beneath her hands, and the only sound in the room -- _was _it a room? -- was her own uneven breathing.

Which was . . . wrong.

Was she alone? Her eyes flew open and were met with only the dull throb of darkness, faint ghostly after-images swimming over it and changing with the re-energised pulse of her own heartbeat. "Xanos?" she called, disliking the hollow, quavering quality of her voice. Her hands ran uncertainly over the ground, feeling craked and dry stone beneath them. "Deekin?"

Her questing fingers touched something cold and sleek, and she flinched back before she recognized it for what it was; her blade. She ran the tips of her fingers over it, and her heart sank when she reached the slanted, rough edge where it had been snapped in half; foolishly, she thought, given her situation. On hands and knees now, ignoring the insistant pain her body offered, Twen shuffled awkwardly forward, trying to blink away the darkness as she called out again.

It wasn't until her hands came in contact with something else that she realised how tenuously her panic had been held in check.

The hand she groped at now, slack on the floor, was frighteningly cold to the touch. "Xanos?" she'd intended to scream it, but her throat would only admit her a whisper. "Xanos?"


	2. Chapter One Whispers in the Darkness

These Roads We Walk - Chapter One

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**DEEKIN**

There were many wonders in the world.

It had been above the shifting sands of the Anauroch that he had stood on the edge of Undrentide as it had been birthed from the earth, rising ungainly into the sky at the urging of it's usurper mistress, feeling it shudder at the pull of time and ancient magics best forgotten. Beneath the sands, as well, he had encountered a different sort of wonder, a poisoned altar to the Mistress of Poison, Talona, secreted away in a warren of tunnels filled with furtive, sinister scuttlings. He had even, on occasion, felt his soul writhing from his body toward whatever lay beyond for those such as he, only to find himself spasming on the chilled floor of a frozen labyrinth moments later.

In Deekin's humble opinion, some experiences you could do without.

Frequently, a bowl of good stew was just as inspiring.

The flight from Undrentide in it's final moments had been troubling to say the least. The little kobold liked to think he had grown since leaving the mountains surrounding now-distant Hilltop, but he would have been sceptical to find even the girthiest of warriors claiming they felt no ill effects from being rudely shunted from place to place via strange magics. He sat hunched on the ground now, breathing deep the scent of freshly turned earth and blinking in confusion in the dappled sunlight he suddenly found playing across his scales. There was the slightest of breezes in the air, bringing with it the smells of the wild, a veritable assault on his nose after hours, days, weeks spent marching through cramped tunnels.

Craning his neck about, confusion giving way to curiosity, Deekin realised he was standing in a crowded thicket, massive trees rising above him on every side. The ground was littered with wet leaves and vegetation, small holes indicating buried stores of some animal's personal supply of food, and beaten by the hooves of passing deer. Although the branches were intertwined high above his head, the sun was high and fierce enough to light the area, and he found himself stretching in appreciation for it's warmth over the cold corridors he had become used to.

It was then that he realised he was alone in his new appreciation.

For the past several months, Deekin had never been alone, but the sudden change didn't alarm him. Although he had grown used to seeing the Boss' torch light the way ahead of them, hearing the half-orc loudly complaining about everything from the weight of his pack from the itchiness of his clothing, Deekin had always remained self-sufficient. Growing up mostly scorned in the kobold tribe near Hilltop, even with Old Master's favour, he'd learned quickly how to take care of himself, even if mostly through an ingratiating smile or a stolen piece of meat stripped from a bone.

_Speaking of which . . . _

Already perking up, Deekin swung his small pack to the ground. The Boss had for the most part only given him the smaller things to carry, but his pack still buldged nonetheless with his own possessions and scavengings. The instant he opened it, the contents surged towards the opening. His lute was, he was relieved to note, still safe and intact slung across his back, although only closer inspection later -- and tuning -- would reveal any damage. He pawed through his pack; most of it were items of little consequence to anyone else, he knew -- a curiously shaped stone, pearlescent in colour. A long feather, soft and luxurious even to a curious claw, and sharp of quill. A wad of string, for emergies, and for playing. To Deekin, however, each was a treasure, and he was relieved to note everything seemed to be in place, not the least of which the thick sheaf of notes he'd accumulated over his travels, scraps and pages of parchment closely written with his own almost indecipherable scrawl.

And, most pleasing at the moment, several strips of dried meat.

These Deekin devoured with a relish he'd been unable to display for a long time. Rations had been closely watched over, but here he was confident he could hunt for his own food, even favouring a handful of edible roots if he couldn't manage to catch a rabbit or vole. As he chewed, he gazed around the area, yellow eyes darting quickly into every visible corner, nook, and cranny. While he knew Xanos might very well stride off on his own, he was certain the Boss would sooner slap an ogre's backside while slathered in cooking herbs than she would leave either of them alone.

Which meant, he decided, they'd been left in different places.

Magic, particularily wild magic without direction, was difficult and unpredictable even in the best of times. His own bardic songs and spells, proudly used, were, he believed, not powerful enough (yet anyway) to produce any real disastrous effects if he accidentally mispronounced a word with his mouth full. The Shadow Door the Boss had used to let them flee from Undrentide, however, was something different entirely, a relic scavenged from a shadow's throne. While the Boss hadn't seemed overly concerned about stepping through it (he did admire her, but she could be dismayingly stupid sometimes, he thought), a thousand worrisome tales (most of them having been told to him with particularily malicious glee by Old Master) had flashed through Deekin's small head as he'd inched reluctantly towards it before the half-orc had lost patience and thrown him through by the scruff of his neck.

Come to think of it, Deekin had spent a lot of time being hauled around by the scruff of his neck recently.

His stomach placated, Deekin meticulously relaced his pack and picked it up again. While the lure of sitting down and giving his talons a rest for a while was great, finding the Boss was greater (and, he supposed, Xanos as well, if the half-orc should happen to crop up along the way.). There would be plenty of time for recollections later.

And besides.

The Boss could surely look after herself for now. And she had all the gold for a suitably comfy room at the nearest Inn.

**TWEN**

Forcing herself to remain calm, Twen allowed her hands to explore the one she clutched, heart beating an unsteady tattoo of fear against her rib cage. Perversely, the fact that her vision remained stubbornly dark alarmed her more than the thought that she was holding the hand of a fallen companion, and guilt suffused her face with colour. Her hands ran over the broad fingers encased in an unyeilding metal guantlet, up the wrist, where she abruptly encountered what was undoubtably a cuff of chainmail. Drawing in a breath, she strained to remember; had Xanos been wearing a set of chainmail? The half-orc had been infuriatingly inconsistent about his choice in armor, constantly calling a halt in their march to shuffle through the packs. _You are the one who insisted Xanos pursue other venues than the gifts I am given through my magics_, he'd snapped irritably at one point, _you will wait while Xanos finds the proper equipment to unleash his full potential._

_Please be alive, _Twen thought now, recalling her irritated snort, _please be alive, and I'll never lose patience with you again, no matter how big-headed you get or how many times I have to rearrange the packs after you've pawed through them_.

Blinking fiercely in an attempt to dispell the darkness, she carefully felt further up the arm, breathing in the stale air as she did so. Her palms slid over a chest, broad but still and unmoving, and up until they encountered a strong, slack jaw.

Hardly daring to breathe, Twen slid her hands tentatively over the face.

. . . _not . . . not . . . not him!_

"Xanos, you wonderful idiot!" Twen cried aloud, jumping at the sound of her own voice and laughing in embarassment at her skittishness. The sound rang back at her, wherever she was, amplified from all directions as though she had a chorous of her sisters with her, each as delighted at her discovery as she. True, someone else lay dead beside her now, but it was likely merely the husk of some long-dead adventurer, and at least she knew it wasn't Xanos, slain by a wayward pulse of magical energy, or perhaps a last vengeful spell flung at their backs as Undrentide had collapsed.

Even as she registered this, she realised as well the darkness that had plagued her vision had begun to lift. She remembered a time, seemingly decades ago, back in those first tentative days of training in Hilltop, when she and the other students had stood curiously nearby to watch Dorna Trapspringer attempt to disassemble a simple trap on an empty chest. Distracted, so she'd said, Dorna had slipped and set it off, a startlingly bright flash that had set her reeling back, swearing. For the next three hours, her vision had been almost completely black, leading to many poor jokes on both the part of Twen and Mischa Waymeet as they had followed the sour dwarf about the farm sniggering good-naturedly. Eventually, of course, Dorna had been able to see again, and not one to forgive so easily, she had --

Still touching the fallen man's face, Twen's fingers suddenly sank into something soft and wet that _yielded _--

Twen snatched her hand back, shaking it furiously, lips twisted into a moue of disgust. It coated her fingers, sticky and cloying, a clot of something falling into her lap, only starting to cool, and she had seen enough in these few months out in the world that her mind only weakly tried to reject what it was. Even as she tried to blindly stagger to her feet, her other hand flew over the ground until she felt the hilt of her broken blade beneath it's grasp.

As her hands closed around it and she sought to make sense of the dim shapes her eyes now offered her, a hand clapped over the back of her neck, and she let out a startled shout as she was toppled forward. Her jaw struck the ground, teeth clicking shut painfully on her tongue hard enough to illuminate her vision with bright stars. Before she could struggle, could bring the broken sword about, the a hard weight dropped down onto her back. A voice so close to her ear that she felt dry lips caress it's tip whispered, "Please do not struggle. There is no need to discompose yourself. It will all be over soon."


	3. Chapter Two Far Away From Home

These Roads We Walk - Chapter Two

---------

**JEZRA**

The road had been a long and winding one, less-travelled as well judging from the shoddy state of it, winding as far west as you could get without kissing the coastline. The carriage, if you could call it that, lurched unpleasantly with each irregularity in the road, and after several hours of travel, Jezra was beginning to feel every bump and jostle right up to her teeth. She shifted uncomfortably on the scuffed and splintered wooden bench and shot an irritated look at the driver beside her, slack face lit unfavourably by the noon sun, which picked out each and every grizzled pockmark in his face. "How much farther to the next town?"

He didn't respond immediately. The horses pulling the thing were cantankerous, raggedy old nags that likely weren't smart enough to remember the task at hand without constant guidance. "A ways." he said finally. He reached into his worn, sun-faded jacket and pulled out a handful of seeds. He offered her one, and when she shook her head in distaste, popped one into his mouth and cracked it noisily, spitting the husk over the side. "Waterdeep ain't much farther b'yond that, I figger. Day or so, mebbe."

Jezra's nose wrinkled. "I've had enough of cities, thanks. Figure I'll find me some li'l town, a wide place in the road, see, get me some supplies, then head out in the direction least likely to get me meetin' up with anyone for a good long while."

The old man gave her an approving look from underneath bushy, graying brows. "Aye, ye've the right o' it, I think. Less stink that way, less stupidity."

They both grunted in agreement.

The sun was high overhead, and Jezra was beginning to wish she hadn't opted to stow her heavier leathers beneath the carriage with her pack. The heat would have been strenuous, but the sun itself was already blistering her shoulders, which ached with every movement, as much from the sun as from the trip itself. Truthfully, she could have gone below into the travelling compartment with the other paying customers, but one look at the stained tunic and lecherous gaze of one traveller and the bright, talk-to-me-please eyes of the other had been enough to send her climbing up next to the driver. She still wasn't much one for company, even a day after leaving Neverwinter. The pall the city and the events had cast over her would take a long time to shrug off.

Besides, the carriage driver, Gunderson by name, was hardly a bad sort. There had been no "dearie", no "sweetheart", no surreptitious glances at her anatomy. Gunderson was a man beaten into position by the world, and wise enough to know that the quickest way to make peace with anyone was not to speak to begin with. They had exchanged only the briefest of pleasantries, the required comments on each others' pasts.

"Got me a wife, see." Gunderson had said at one point, clucking his tongue to remind the horses to keep moving. "Some men, they'd go on abou' what sorta harpies they've got fer wives. Bollicks, I says. Ye wanna complain, piss yer trousers and doddle in the streets with the rest o' the idiots and leave the womenfolk t'their business. Dorcas might be a bit o' a hard case, but she ain't never gone and knocked me 'round the ears when I ain't been fool enough t'deserve it."

"Left home just three years ago when I was sixteen." Jezra had supplied for her part. "Damndest fool thing I ever done, and I done some stupid things, but all I could thinka at the time were adventure and coin. Don't think I've got me a room waitin' for me even if I had coin enough t'find me way back, but I wouldn't wanna anyways. Couldn't stand starin' at the same four walls like I used to. The curse of the road, I figure. Love it and hate it at the same time, aye?"

They'd made commiserating sounds about the information the other offered up, but that had been the extent of it. Neither the man nor the woman saw the point in learning more about some stranger you'd never see again.

Besides, the less you knew, the less you could have forced out of you later. If it came to that.

The shuttered windows on the side of the carriage banged open abruptly and a young man leaned out. He squinted forward into the dust, then craned his neck up to look at the driver. "Are we nearly there, then? Professor Phineus says he's been checking the map, and we should be there by now." There was a murmur from inside and he added. "Are you lost? Professor Phineus says if you're lost he can come up and--"

"Ye can tell yer Phineus that I says if he comes up here an' tries to shove that piece o' paper o' his under me nose, I'm pullin' over an' he can see the rest o' the way to Caer Fuleihn strapped to the back o' a mule, which 'appens to have more story-type know-how'n I've got in me li'l finger. Blast it all. Ye hoser." Gunderson added for good measure, looking satisfied as the windows slammed shut, and Jezra heard indignant voices from within.

"Caer Fuleihn's the next town?" Jezra asked doubtfully. She'd never heard of the place, but then she'd paid much attention to maps or any other form of geography, usually finding her way from one location to another by blind luck alone.

Gunderson snorted, chuffing laughter as they rounded a corner, a particularily large divot in the road making Jezra's teeth click together painfully as they bounced over it. "Caer Fuleihn's the next wide spot in the road, girl. Ain't more'n four or so fam'lies there, I reckon, an' a mouldy ol' stack o' hay for an inn, I'll wager, but damned if ye can tell 'em they ain't a hub o' commerce. Country life." He snorted again.

Jezra didn't comment. She knew all too well what he meant, the sort of blind, quirky arrogance that descended upon some small settlements, where they viewed outsiders as potential contaminants to their 'perfect' way of life. She had been much the way herself, nervously shieing away from passing travellers, until her thirteenth year, when she'd finally given an ear to the stories some of them had to tell. When she didn't speak again, Gunderson sniffed as he shifted positions with a wince of aching bones. "Heard tell o' them doin's up in Ne'erwinter?"

She stiffened slightly. "I might've."

He grunted. "Take 'em down a notch, I say. Ain't sayin' a loss o' lives is somethin' t'celebrate, but we go too long with trag'dy, some o' us peoples start gettin' funny notions, thinkin' they're invincible, or it's time fer greatness, or summat, and the gods decide t'give us a knock on the head an' show us who's boss, y'see." He sighed and shook his head. "We ain't ne'er gonna live in a peaceful world. Best t'just make the best o' it." Abruptly, he turned the carriage off to the side of the road, brought the horses to a stop, and stretched. "Right. Let's have us a wee bit o' a rest stop, aye?"

Relieved, Jezra swung off the side of the carriage and dropped to the road, clouds of dust rising about her boots. The conversation hadn't been heading in a comfortable direction. For as long as possible, she intended to forget all about other people, as soon as she could.

The carriage door swung open, and she sprang back, narrowly avoiding it. Staggering out was the bedraggled, dirty looking man she'd first seen when boarding, his long, frayed robes dragging in the dirt. He was tall and gangly, what little hair he had long and greasy and clinging about his unshaven face, in which his flat blob of a nose was decidedly off-center. He shot her an appraising look, eyes lingering about her hips and breasts, before dismissing her with a snort and tottering off into the sparse bushes that lined the road, a bottle hangling loosely from one hand. The carriage's other occupant, an enthusiastic and disshevelled looking young man with unruly blonde hair and unkempt robes, jumped out after him. He took two steps in the older man's direction before he noticed Jezra and spun in her direction, hand held out. "Jarred Jacobson, ma'am, pleased to meet you! Please excuse the Professor, he's had a rough night . . . er . . . nights."

With an inward sigh, Jezra took his hand gingerly and released it almost immediately. There was a time when she would have been only too willing to listen to him, eagerly sharing every detail about her travels, with a few well-placed exaggerations. "Professor, is it?"

Jacobson's smile slipped slightly, and he glanced nervously off into the bushes, where a loud, off-key singing could be heard over the unmistakable sound of someone urinating. "Yes. Professor Anderson Phineus. He's . . . quite brilliant. Smashing mage. Wonderful ideas, you know, but . . . well, a hard few nights, as I've said."

Not feeling herself to be in any particular position to pass judgement, Jezra only rolled her shoulders in a shrug. Because people were more apt to remember someone who had been impolite, she asked, "Where're ye headed, then?"

Jacobson, who had been frowning worriedly off into the trees, jumped at her voice and turned back to face her. "Ah . . . Athkatla."

"Long ways away."

"Ye-esss . . . yes, it certainly is." His smile slipped again, but Jezra felt one trying to reclaim her own lips. In his face, she saw the frightened, nervous youth she herself had been, although this one was almost certainly a handful of years older than she was; all ambition, all fear at a suddenly enormous world at heart. "But, you know, the Professor has been offered a very lucrative position with the Cowled Wizards, so . . . " He spread his hands expressively, trailing off.

"So yer his brave and noble assistant then, are ye?" Jezra asked wryly. Above, on the carriage seat, Gunderson chuckled and another seed casing was spat over her head into the road.

"I . . . well, I carry his things and the like, but . . . " Jacobson's face performed an odd sort of wince; clearly, he had realised too late that the best way to have made himself sound better would have been to lie. " . . . but, no, I'm . . . I'm just his student."

"I bet she'd have let you snog her once or so if you'd gone and told her all about how you washed the vomit out of his hair last night." a voice sang suddenly out of the open carriage, trilling and feminine.

Jacobson's eyes darted past Jezra to the carriage door. "You don't know anything about it." he snapped hotly, dull colour rising in his face. "And I'm just making a little conversation. It's important to always keep things _pleasant_."

From inside, there was a delighted laugh, a rustle, and a short, stocky form abruptly leapt out with surprising lightness. Although it's back was to her, and the figure wore an unflatteringly bulky mish-mash of torn and re-stitched leathers of various colours, Jezra could see enough to be certain it was female, even if the voice hadn't had a sound like smoke and honey. "You're so _testy._" she teased. "If it's so important to keep things _pleasant_, why doesn't your dearest darling Professor do the same thing for his smell?"

For an instant, the young man seemed to be swelling with anger or indignation, and Jezra deftly stepped aside out of the line of fire. After a moment, however, he only nodded curtly to her, and spun to march into the trees, calling for his teacher, the brambles whipping over his calves as he passed.

"That'un's a good boy." Gunderson commmented idly from above. There was a rustle, and another shower of empty seed casings. "Good boy, but a bit daft."

The woman tut-tutted a moment before turning around. "Saying he's a bit daft is like saying getting a hug from a Drow is a bit suspicious, don't you think?"

Before Jezra could stop herself, she had gasped.

It was a woman, yes, and it was clearly a gnome. In stark contrast to her sweet voice, however, her face would not have been out of place leering from a dungeon's darkened corner.

Perhaps at birth and for some time after, she had been a lovely creature. Some vestiges of that remained, in the surprisingly delicate structure of her bones, a patch or two of smooth, young skin, short, luxurious amber hair and almost fathomless eyes like freshly poured brandy. Her face was a mass of scar tissue, aged and white and ugly, some bubbling across her forehead, and more pulling the right corner of her mouth and her right eye towards one another, giving the ghastly appearance of a leering wink. Her nose had been broken several times, at least, knobbly and oddly flattened in it's appearance, seeming to pull her entire face off to one side. Her left ear had nearly been cut off at some point, and some field doctor's shoddy worksmanship had turned it into little more that a twisted, hard nub of flesh. Above and below her mouth were several neat, long-healed dimples from small holes.

She cast a critical eye over Jezra, cocked her head and grinned, the sight frightening. "Shut your mouth, darling. You're drawing flies."

Gunderson cackled. "Ye always gets the admirers, Errigal." he said, fondly.

There was, Jezra thought, no way to salvage the situation, no attempt at social grace that could possibly repair the way she had gawked and the stamp of horror that she struggled to wipe fully from her face, standing there in the sunshine with that unfortunate creature. She made several attempts, grasping at mental straws, before she said, stupidly, "D'ye know him, then?"

Errigal, if that was her name, ruffled her hair absently with one hand, the other still planted firmly on her hip. "Oh yes. The Professor Phineus and I are quite well acquainted, although I can't say as I'm terribly pleased to be sharing such close quarters with him. I meant what I said about the smell."

Despite the dry amusement in the gnome's voice and the lack of hostility, Jezra would have given anything to be able to climb back up to her seat and huddle there until Caer Fuleihn. She had decided she would have very little, positive _or _negative, to do with people for a very good while, and she had already failed quite abysmally at that. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Tomi Undergallows was crowing laughter at her, and she suddenly felt as unsure and wrongfooted as she would have back as a child before a visiting dignitary. "That's . . . that's too bad."

The gnome's ghastly grin widened, and when he gaze flicked upward, Jezra had no doubt she was sharing a look of amusement with the carriage driver. Her temper rankled, pushed by wounded pride, and she heard herself saying, a little angrily, "Look, I'll just clear off then, shall I, and ye lot go and gimme a holler when yer ready to -- "

"Do you like nettlewine?" Errigal interrupted.

Startled, Jezra blinked. "Yes."

"Pity I don't have any, then. You can share my waterskin though, if you like." the woman sat down quite simply on the side of the road, short, stubby legs sticking out before her, and, after a moment, Jezra surprised herself by following suit and taking the waterskin when it was offered, surprised at how thristy she found herself to be.

As they sat in silence, the rapidly dwindly contents in the waterskin passed between them, Jezra realised the only thing keeping her from staring further was the surreal quality to the entire day. The leavetaking from Neverwinter, the long walk down the road until she had flagged down Gunderson and his carriage, and the long periods of silence that followed with nothing but her own disjointed thoughts to listen to. And here, now, sitting with this disfigured gnome watching their driver spit the remains of his snack over the side seemed yet another queer piece in an increasingly odd puzzle whose picture made no sense.

She wondered, not for the first time in the past week, if she might be going mad.

"Phineus and the Cowled Wizards." Errigal remarked presently, and Gunderson laughed again. They seemed to know each other quite well. "The Gods help Amn."

After a moment, Jezra said, "Listen, I'm sorry about -- "

"Don't worry about it." Errigal interrupted, and Jezra relaxed slightly.

"I was worried ye might hate me."

"Oh, I do." The gnome finally looked at her directly, face perfectly serious. "I do. I do hate you. But it isn't anything personal. I hate Phineus, too, and even Gunderson. I find things are easier that way. What about you?" she asked, before Jezra could work out wether or not the gnome was having her on. "What do you find easier? I heard you bemoaning your wanderings earlier with our fine driver. And you look over your shoulder so often it's a wonder the whites of your eyes aren't attracting crows from miles away."

"S'true." Gunderson agreed.

Frowning at them both now, her discomfort lost in indignation, Jezra said, "It's not too much to ask for a bit of alone time, is it?"

Errigal chuckled, the sound musical. "Of course not. And what deep-dark secret are we running from today? Pre-arranged marriage? Murder a noble? What _are _the kids into these days? Tymora knows, I don't want to be out of touch at my next performance. Young ones can smell fear, you know." she added breezily.

"S'true." Gunderson agreed again, bobbing his gray head and casting about forlornly in his jacket for another handful of seeds.

"T'ain't nothin' like that!" Jezra said, sharply. Sharper than she had intended, and Errigal's smile changed slightly in quality. "I have me reasons, and I don't need to be explainin' them to ye and yers. Fair?"

"Fair." Errigal said, immediately. She already seemed to have lost interest in the conversation, and she rubbed idly at the mess of connecting scar tissue near her mouth with one finger. From the bushes, not too far away, came an angry, drunken shout and the loud sound of glass breaking. "I think our young man has found our esteemed Professor."

"Aye." Stretching with an audible pop, Gunderson sighed regretfully.

Jezra dusted herself off as she stood, skin protesting when she moved out of the shade of the carriage and into the sun again. She could only hope that the next stop truly wasn't too far down the road, and frowned inwardly. Her new life -- or at least, her _different _life -- was scant hours away, yet she felt no fear, no excitement, no nervousness towards it. Nothing. Only a dull sort of acceptance.

She had seen the same feeling in someone else's eyes, back in Neverwinter.

And it was then, with a loud crash of underbrush and a piercing yelp, that the kobold all but exploded from the woods in front of her.

It's flat scaled feet entangled with one another when it saw them, dark eyes goggling almost comically with something like fright, and it hit the ground painfully. Rather than try to spring at them or scrabble for the safety of concealing woods, however, the creature curled into a ball and shrieked, "You not hurts Deekin! Deekin not do anything, he _swears_!"

As Jezra could only stare, frozen in the position of boosting herself up onto the carriage seat, Errigal remarked calmly with a trace of amusement, "Looks to be one of those days, Gunderson."

"Ar." came the reply.

----------

Author's Note: And the story finally begins to hit it's stride, with more than two lines of dialogue, and much _action _begins next chapter. I don't mean to have every chapter end on some semblance of a cliffhanger, and it won't always be that way either. I totally _swear_. Twen, unfortunately, gets left where she is for the next little while as _things _happen, but, fortunately, hasn't been built up enough as a character for anyone to really care. Yet.


	4. Chapter Three Another Walk in the Park

These Roads We Walk - Chapter Three - Another Walk In The Park

Author's Note: The beginning of this was difficult creatively to write. But people seem to like it, I guess. I'm trying to develop Jezra more without turning her into the typical heroine, because she really isn't, and neither is Twen. God, one day I swear I will be able to write Deekin and his speech well.

----------

**JEZRA**

"No hurts Deekin!" the kobold squealed again, it's scaley body contorting as though inflicted with torment on the dirt robe, and Jezra approached, more curious than alarmed. It was small, runty even for one of it's kind, and it's scales an odd tarnished gold. The tunic it wore might once have been some sort of flamboyant red material, although it was now stained and torn, and it wore a small if bulging pack, from which a trail of assorted trinkets and bits of trash seemed to leak out of the forest.

It -- it might have been male, but who could tell with kobolds? -- peered out between it's small taloned hands and gave a yelp of alarm at her nearness, leaping to it's feet and nearly toppling over again. The look of fright, indignation, and embarassment she could read in it's eyes and odd face might not have been comical if her previous experiences with the creatures had been anything but. "Please," it begged in it's grating voice, clasping it's hands (paws?) together and wringing them plaintively before it, all the while shuffling nervously backward, "please, no troubles! No troubles! Deekin not wants any troubles!"

"Ain't a soul alive wants more troubles than they got." Gunderson put it, apparently unconcerned, shedding a handful of lint from the interior of his pockets over the side of the carriage.

Before Jezra could think of a suitable response under the imploring, nervous gaze of the creature, the bushes on the side of the road shuddered violently again, this time disgorging Phineas, with Jacobson, puffing, on his heels. The kobold shrieked in alarm, and the horses rolled their eyes in fear in response, pawing anxiously at the ground. The staggering, rolling manner with which Phineas left remained -- what had changed was the subtle quality of menace behind it, and in the twitching sneer of his lips. Jacobson, for his part, merely looked as though he were perhaps wishing the robes he had chosen to wear today were of a darker colour.

"Disgusting creature." Phineas spat flatly, scrubbing the back of one knobbly hand across his lips. "Reminds me of why I never bothered to leave the city before. Vermin control!"

At this, the kobold bristled slightly. "Deekin not bes vermin! Deekin bes great and noble bard!" At this, Jezra thought she saw Errigal's interest prickle slightly, and the gnome leaned forward on the balls of her feet.

"Aye, I bet you are." A smirk transformed Phineas's features into something breathtakingly ugly. "I said the same thing to a ready lass or two with an echo between her legs in my own day. I think the fact that I never burned a village or two to the ground might have helped my case."

Deekin drew it -- him? -- self up to his full height and levelled a glare, the effect slightly ruined by the tenseness in his body; for the first time, Jezra noticed she had mistaken caution for fear. For all the kobold raids her village had suffered through in her childhood, she had never known one to stand it's ground when threatened with more than two nervous farmers armed with shovels. "You reminds Deekin of old drunk that comes stumbling into Old Master's cave one day." He paused, and seemed to be savouring the memory. "Old Master says he not tastes any better coming up than going down."

The snide amusement vanished from Phineas's face, and his upper lip curled agressively. "I'll fry your liver until it bursts from your eyesockets you disrespectful -- "

"Children, children!" Jezra cried, hovering between amusement and alarm. "Settle down. No need for name callin', aye? We're all just travellers on this same lonely road, ain't we, lookin' to get by?" _Without any trouble. _she added silently.

"Ar." said Gunderson, again. He had clambered down from the seat by now, and was soothing the horses with a practiced hand.

"Deekin just wants to be getting by, yes!" the kobold bobbed his head enthusiastically, and although he kept a wary eye on Phineas, he half-turned in Jezra's direction. "He has to be findings his Boss, he does, or she not be very happy, he be thinking. So, we, um, we say goodbyes, yes?"

"He called me a drunkard." Phineas spat, red-rimmed eyes rolling in Jezra's direction. "I won't be spoken to that, not by any man or beast alive." There was something sullen and bitterly angry in his tone.

_Aye, 'cause it ain't like it's true or nothin'. _Jezra sniffed slightly, inhaling the scent of body odor and ale fumes.

"I don't know of any caves about the area that don't play host to gnolls or goblins. Nothing that would employ a kobold." Errigal spoke up, and the kobold turned towards her, giving a slight start when he noticed her face.

"Deekin knows that." he said in a pained tone, gazing at them as though they were stupid. "_Old _Master lives in cave. _New _Master lives . . . " he looked blank for a moment, then waved a claw expansively. " . . . somewheres. That what Deekin be trying to find out. That why he has to _go_. Well. That, and . . . er . . . "

"Babies to eat?" Jacobson said shrilly, still standing half-behind his beloved professor. Jezra doubted he had ever seen a kobold out of a textbook before. "Books to burn?"

"No." Deekin replied, more annoyed now than anything, and he pointed past them. "Deekin be trying to get away from _those_."

Jezra spun around in time to catch the first in the chest.

And then things really went to hell.

----------

**DEEKIN**

Humans could be so stupid sometimes.

Kobolds would never have allowed an entire fist of gnolls to sneak up on them from behind. And if they had simply allowed him to hurry on when he'd _asked_, if the unpleasant smelling fellow and his loud companion hadn't turned on him when he'd stumbled into them in the woods, then they probably wouldn't have even crossed paths anyway, let alone suddenly found themselves neck-deep in rank fur and sharp blades.

The creatures that had been pursuing him for the past hour after Deekin had made the mistake of poking his snout inquiringly into an unfortunately occupied cave set in the forest floor, yelping and snarling to one another with savage glee as they made a game out of chasing the already fatigued kobold, spilled out of the forest in a tide of grinning muzzles and bristling weapons, lighting on the nearest human like starved dogs. Deekin heard her grunt as two tackled her, but he didn't have time to spare a sympathetic ear for the screams that would undoubtably follow as the ten remaining gnolls descended.

He was still drained from the battle atop Undrentide, and he felt foolish now for not allowing himself the rest he knew he'd needed. Even the Boss often said all things required sleep. Now, however, he was left jumping frantically backwards out of the fray, frantically trying to find a stray bundle of bolts in his pack that might have eluded him. Not so long ago, perhaps, he might have fled and left the humans to deal with the creatures.

As he was trying to carve a niche for himself in civilised society, however, he felt that might be frowned upon.

The blade of a crude halberd cut the air in front of his snout, and Deekin yelped in fright, leaping backwards and allowing his pack to spill to the ground as he scrabbled instead for the dagger tied to his belt. If the gnoll that advanced was smiling or snarling was impossible to tell, it's intent was unmistakeable as hostile. The halberd was swung again, and Deekin leapt to one side, frantically carving at the fur-covered muscled arm with his dagger. The creature barely snorted in response as it reversed the swing of the weapon, and Deekin was forced to drop; even if kobolds were a thousand times cleverer than a gnoll on the gnoll's best day, a gnoll would always be the more powerful warrior.

Which was fine. Deekin was happier using his brain and feet any day than a large weapon meant to compensate for the slowness of both.

He darted forward under the extended weapon and struck upward with the dagger. The gnoll's broad chest was covered in a battered and burnt looking boiled leather jerkin, but the underside of it's arm was unguarded, and the dagger's blade sank to the hilt in the soft flesh of the beast's armpit. This time the creature notice the attack, and threw back it's head and let out an eerie cacophony of pained yelps and shrieks, trying to back away on it's powerful but awkward legs as Deekin gave the dagger one final twist before pulling it out. The gnoll gave a disconcertingly human moan of pain as it briefly examined the wound, arm clutched close to it's side and halberd trailing in the dirt, before it's baleful yellow gaze fixed on the kobold again, muzzle wrinkling in an unmistakeable snarl.

Before it could gather itself for an attack, Deekin sprang forward and clamped his jaws around it's arm, sinking his small, needle-sharp teeth in up to the gumline.

He barely had time to reflect on how _awful _the taste was -- didn't gnolls ever bathe or groom their fur? -- before he found himself flung through the air like a sack of grain.

Deekin landed at the feet of the tall, scraggly, smelly human who had verbally attacked him earlier, and the man leaned down and bellowed, "Stay out of the way!" before stepping over Deekin, a long quarterstaff in hand, and engaging the closest gnoll.

Alarm momentarily forgotten in the face of curiosity, Deekin rolled over to watch the confrontation.

Rather than falling like a piece of tired old meat as expected, the man swung the quarterstaff in a vicious downward arc, connecting solidly with the tender snout of the gnoll. The creature barely had time to register the pain before the staff reversed course and slammed with surprising strength into the side of it's head, caving in it's skull with a sickening crack, and Deekin suddenly found himself scrabbling aside as the gnoll toppled to the ground with the barest of whimpers. He regarded the old man with a little grudging respect as he climbed to his feet; at least he hadn't fled like the other, younger human into the false safety of the carriage.

The horses had gone berserk, driven into a panic by the gnolls, and one more creature was felled as one animal's hoof clipped it on the temple as it reared, twisting and straining to break free of it's reins. Deekin could hear the other old human yelling, although wether trying in vain to restore some sort of calm to his horses or in fright and pain, Deekin didn't know.

What he did know was he was rapidly becoming glad he had run into the humans when he did.

Snarling with an almost animal-like ferocity himself, the old human swung the staff again and again, wading into the thick of the remaining gnolls without regard to his own safety. As Deekin gamely hurried forward to help, he heard the man give a sudden unintelligible shout, and in a brilliant flash of green light, the nearest gnoll stumbled back with an enraged howl, clawing at it's face and doing further damage to it's eyes as thick acid dripped down it's features, filling the air with the stench of liquefying flesh and melting fur.

Another series of pained, shocked yelps drew Deekin's attention precariously away even as he slashed at the tendons in the legs of another gnoll. The female he'd have thought dead for sure was on her feet; one gnoll lay dead on the ground, a fistful of vicious looking darts protruding from one eye, and the other that had attacked her was backing away, lupine head bowed submissively, whimpering in confused pain as it clawed at another dart protruding from the thick ruff of fur at the side of it's throat, leathers already painted black with blood. Incredibly, she leapt to engage it, hands now empty, and attacked it's eyes with hooked fingers of one hand while the other found the dart and wrenched it in further. There was no room for finesse -- that Deekin understood. Here was only raw survival.

That was when the halberd hit him across the shoulders.

The pain was unlike anything Deekin had ever experienced. Although he had taken his share of knocks and bruises along the journey he'd embarked on with the Boss and her taciturn companion, they had always taken the brunt of the damage. This pain was his whole world, and he didn't even register the wetness running down his back as he shrieked ceaselessly, thin scales no match for honed blade. He pitched forward, writhing in the dirt road, and felt as much as saw the long shadow falling across him.

Deekin squeezed his eyes shut. Somehow, he didn't think the humans would bother to pay the fee to have him returned to the living.

But the killing strike that would have surely taken off his head didn't come.

Instead, amidst the snarls and shouts, he heard one voice raised in arcane chanting.

Daring to open one eye and twisting his head to the side despite the pain, Deekin saw the disfigured gnome he'd all but forgotten carving strange patterns in the air with her hands, face serene in concentration.

A second later, the gnolls began attacking each other.

Although they had surely been wounded in the attack so far, although the entire thing had likely taken less than five minutes, blood and wound were forgotten and weapons fell to the ground as they rounded on one another, snarling and snapping with powerful jaws, heads darting forward for throats. Deekin watched in distant amazement as the creatures surged back towards the woods, clawing and rending at their own flesh, eyes wild with pain and confusion. The gnome's face turned towards him, and Deekin thought she might have winked.

"Oh." he breathed. "That bes good."

And then he passed out.

----------

He wasn't sure what awoke him. The foul taste in his mouth, or the insistant voice in his ear. Deekin's limbs felt as though they were weighted down with stones, and his head felt fuzzy and disconnected from his body.

"Wake up. _Wake up_, now."

Reluctantly, Deekin opened one eye. Somehow, the ground view of scuffled earth, prancing horse's hooves, and distant greenery wasn't want he expected the afterlife to look like.

Then his gaze focused on the human female kneeling beside him, and the empty bottle clutched in her fist, and he understood, as well as recognising the taste. Of course, hadn't the Boss patiently poured many a vial of the same healing fluids down his throat over the course of their journeys?

"Ah." she said, seeing his eye open. "Good. Awake, are you?"

"Yes." Deekin said, gratefully.

"Good." she said. "Good." And then her other hand shifted in front of his eyes, and Deekin saw the fistful of bloodied darts she held as she smiled. "I think it's time we had a little talk, you and I. Don't you?"

Deekin swallowed. Suddenly, he wished, as he had countless times before, he was back in Old Master's cave, even if he was being rolled on or trying to pretend he didn't smell passed gas. Trying his best to look cooperative, he nodded.


	5. Chapter Four The Best of Friends

These Roads We Walk - Chapter Four - The Best of Friends

Author's Note: This chapter is long. Looooooong by my usual standards. But, I get to play with two very fun characters.

----------

**JEZRA**

"You're lying." Phineas said flatly, some time later.

"It's lying." Jacobson agreed.

They were standing in the shade of the carriage, the four of them -- Jezra, Errigal, Phineas, and Jacobson -- towering above the kobold who sat patiently on the ground. The sun had dipped low in the sky while the little beast -- Deekin -- had spoken, and several times the tale had grown so outlandish Jezra had had to literally bite her tongue to keep from ending it all out of impatience. Although she hadn't been wounded anywhere near as grievously as the kobold had been, her body had been battered enough by the gnolls' brute force that it protested the way she stubbornly insisted on remaining on her feet, if, she was forced to admit, for no other reason than Phineas hardly seemed winded.

The problem hadn't been getting Deekin to cooperate. He was quite willing to speak at length about his travels with his 'Boss' -- the trouble was getting him to remain on one track longer than five minutes.

Despite herself, Jezra understood. When she had left her village, everything had seemed an adventure, and one fantastic sight had only reminded her of another. Only now, a handful of years later, could she look back with knowing embarassment of the often pained, often humouring looks of the adventurers with whom she had occasionally shared a fire along the road, never tiring of speaking of a thousand things at once, each of which had seemed terribly exciting and noteworthy to her naieve mind.

Deekin, by his own admission, had spent the majority of his life apparently in the service of his 'Old Master' -- a large white wyrm named Tymofarrar in the mountains far to the north. That was hardly unbelievable; dragons were known to keep small, easy to bully creatures about to do their bidding.

The unbelievable part was that the same dragon was apparently now playing grudging guardian to the frozen land upon which resided the small hamlet of Hilltop at the behest of Deekin's new 'Boss' -- which, after some prying, (and several tangented stories about gnolls and troublesome half-orcs) Jezra had discovered to be a young elf by name of Twen. It was, so Deekin said, with this same elf he had traversed a good portion -- in his estimation -- of the world, "doing good deedses and writing many heroic ballads, oh yes!" In Jezra's experience, elves were worth little more than the parchment they often wrote their flowering ballads on, and she found it hard to imagine one capable of such feats despite what stories might say -- after all, her own father had certainly been lacking in any heroism. Forcing dragons into service, battling medusae, delving deep into a lair of Stingers in the desert? It all sounded like a string of boastful lies to her.

Phineas, however, seemed to have no trouble believing such things. Or at least, he'd listened in stony silence through most of it, until the end. This was where he'd run up against a wall.

"Undrentide, risen at the whim of some half-cocked sorceress? If she was defeated by the likes of you, I can only imagine the piddling amount of power she must have commanded, and to cause _Undrentide _to do the things you suggest . . . " the grizzled scholar trailed off with a barking laugh, the kobold flinching back in disgust at the spray of spittle. "If you're a bard, creature, I first advise you to take some lessons in believability if you hope to gain an audience -- and I sincerely doubt you'll find one that doesn't want to roast you on a spit beforehand. Nobody wants to listen to dribbling fantasty."

Deekin gazed up at him with exaggerated weariness. "Deekin not say _he _defeat snake-haired lady. He says him and _Boss _defeats her." he paused, then nodded his head as if in acknowledgement of something. " . . . and rude half-orc. But mostly, it be Deekin and the Boss."

"If I travelled with a half-orc, I would probably want to omit it from the story as well." Errigal commented, sharing a commiserating look with the kobold. Throughout the story she had listened with an expression of studied attention; now, her eyes were thoughtful and far away.

"Deekin was thinkings of that, but Boss probably not let him." Deekin agreed eagerly, before his head drooped. "If . . . if Deekin can finds his Boss. Toril be real big, and Deekin only gots real little legs . . . it might take him a while. That why Deekin was thinking he gets going now, yes?" he added hopefully, rising.

"Not just yet." Jezra said wearily, pushing the kobold back down by the shoulder.

The kobold sighed.

"Undrentide," Jacobson supplied into the tense silence, "is an immense artifact of great power, built by the Netherese themselves. If it had risen, I think we might have heard about it." he added disdainfully, with a superior look. He glanced hopefully about for support; ever since his cowardly display during the attack, he had been desperately trying to prove his worth by piping up during the kobold's lengthy story with unneeded facts. Privately, Jezra thought, the kid was out of his league with Phineas who, unsavoury though he was, had at least held his own in the attack.

_Perhaps a little too well . . . _Phineas hadn't exactly been careful about where he'd swung that staff of his, and Jezra rubbed the sore spot on her arm, glaring in his direction.

"Not necessarily." Errigal said, coming out of her reverie and speaking towards Jacobson. "Going by what he's said, all this has happened less than a day ago . . . even the biggest news has to travel, and horses and pigeons are only so fast . . . "

"Aye." Gunderson's voice floated down from above. Miraculously unscathed from the attack, the old man had climbed unconcernedly back up to his seat once the horses had been calmed -- or as much as they would allow themselves to be -- and he had relaxed there ever since, apparently content to listen to the unbelievable story unfolding below with little more than the occasional chuckle. "Even when these old nags were new'uns, they ain't hardly tornaders." He spat over the opposite side of the carriage, and as Jezra knew this time the old man had no seeds, she wrinkled her nose in distaste.

"Are you actually putting stock in this thing's story?" Jacobson asked incredulously.

"Country bumpkins." Phineas chuckled flatly. He was leaning on his staff now, and had retrieved another bottle from somewhere within the dirty folds of his long cloak, this one full of some dark, unpleasant looking liquid that Jezra wouldn't have been surprised to find dripping out of the underside of a dwarf's middenheap. He pointed the bottle at Deekin as he spoke. "This elf of yours . . . what does she do?" When the kobold looked blank, Phineas snorted and took a long swallow of the bottle before replying, his speech steady and firm. "Before she became your 'Boss'."

Deekin brightened. "Boss talks lots about that. She tells Deekin all abouts how family gets together coin to sends her to Hilltop, so she can gets training. Boss not really wants to go, but when Boss talks about Hilltop, her sounds real happy." He stopped abruptly, then dipped his head slightly. When he spoke again, his tone was both ashamed and regretful. "Boss sounds real happy, but real sad when she talks about old dwarf Drogan too."

At this, both Errigal and Phineas straightened slightly, the old man's bottle pausing en route to his lips again. "Drogan, is it? And an old dwarf to boot?"

"Yep." Deekin affirmed, still oddly despondent. "Drogan Droganson, Deekin thinks."

"Stone me for a halfling and call me a jester." Phineas said, and laughed. He licked at a drop of moisture on his upper lip and fixed the kobold with a cruel stare. "I believe you. If there's one thing that old fool is famous for, it's for trying to raise heroes, and putting stupid notions into foolish skulls."

Jezra blinked at him in surprise. "Ye actually believe this kobold and his 'Boss' are some duo of great adventurers?"

Phineas belched laughter again, sneering at her with unpleasant superiority, a snide look Jacobson probably tried to practice and emulate each morning in the polished plate. "Clean the boulders out of your ears, girl. I said I believed this elf of his was under Drogan's care. As for the rest of it, I think he's been rolled over onto one too many times by 'Old Master'."

"Deekin almost been squashed lots of times." the kobold said indignantly, glaring. "But Deekin not stupid, or lying! Deekin goes everywhere with his Boss, and remembers everything! And he even writes it all down, in case he forgets!" And he plunged a paw into his battered backpack and pulled up a sheaf of papers, waving them in the air. Phineas rolled his eyes elaborately, although Errigal regarded them with great interest.

"So, where is this Boss of yers now?" Jezra asked tiredly. "Why ain't ye off with her, instead of bringin' all sorts of gnoll calamity down on unsuspectin' heads, like?"

The kobold's imploring gaze found her own. Throughout his story, Deekin had spoke primarily to her; he seemed to think that as she had been the one to heal his wounds, she would be the most receptive to his tale. "That what Deekin is tryings to _tell _you. After Boss and Deekin kills snake-haired lady, Boss be pullings Deekin into weird door while floating city be fallings. Deekin ends up in forest, but . . . but Boss not be there!" The obvious distress in the kobold's reptillian features surprised Jezra; she had always been lead to believe kobolds were a cowardly lot who fled their masters when given opportunity. "So Deekin is being lookings for her, and he is thinkin maybes she is nearby, so he when he finds cave he looks inside . . . but there only be gnolls so far, not Boss."

"You must have had dealings with gnolls before." Errigal said, head cocked. "I'm sure you must have recognised the signs of a lair. Why would you go inside?"

Deekin shrugged. "The Boss be very nice elven lady . . . but she always want to bes exploring dark, scary places. She a little crazy like that."

"Heroes often are." Jezra said, thinking of crawling for hours beneath the Great Graveyard of Neverwinter with little more than the taunts of a Yuan-Ti priestess to guide her.

"Well," Gunderson said abruptly, startling them all, "int'restin' as this is, I hate t'say we gotta be gettin' on right about now. I don't reckon that li'l one meant us any harm." He leaned over the side and peered kindly down at Deekin. "I hope ye find yer elf, feller."

"Thank yous." Deekin said gratefully. "Deekin is sorry for scaring youse horses."

"Listen." Errigal said suddenly as the kobold stood. "Do you want some help finding your elf?"

The kobold twisted his head around and stared at her curiously. "You . . . you would help Deekin finds his Boss?"

"To be sure." Errigal smiled, and although to Jezra the overall effect was ghastly, the kobold gazed at her as though he had already found his dearest friend. "I think something unusual here is afoot."

"You're mad." Jacobson blurted. "Assuming this elf even _exists_, if she was really tossed so far by the spell as the kobold was, she could be anywhere."

Surprisingly, Phineas clipped the younger man around the head, glowering. "Don't be daft. Assuming it wasn't a wild magic spell to begin with, I expect it just got it's coordinates slightly skewed and dumped her in a ditch somewhere instead." He paused, then added thoughtfully with some satisfaction, "If it didn't kill her."

If it was possible for scales to blanch, Deekin's did an admirable job of it. After a moment, however, he asked hesitantly, "If, um, if boss were nearby, does that mean the others be too?"

"The half-orc you wanted to deny a share of the glory, you mean?" Errigal asked, and Jezra thought, _If there's really any glory to be had_. Privately, she thought the gnome was being more or less of an idiot, but she kept her mouth shut and merely listened.

"Uh huh." Deekin looked less than thrilled at the prospect. "Big mouth named Xanos."

Although he had turned and begun to climb awkwardly back into the carriage with a grunt, Phineas paused and looked over his shoulder. Although his gaze was still blurry, Jezra thought she detected a keener interest in it beyond the cruel mockery before. "Xanos?"

"Messarmos." Deekin added helpfully, looking politely confused at the newfound attention.

For a long moment, Phineas was perfectly still, one leg still braced in the carriage doorway. Then, abruptly, he dropped back down, grabbed Jacobson by the back of the neck, and all but hurled him towards the luggage lashed to the back. "Get our things, boy." he growled. "We're going to help the runt find his master."

While Errigal didn't look surprised, it was all Jezra could do not to gape. Granted, she had known the man for less than a day, but she still found it hard to imagine him abandoning his own ideas to chase an elf across half of creation with a hyperactive kobold. "Just a minute." she snapped. "Yer friend there said ye were goin' to Amn."

"Yes!" Jacobson cried, looking frantic. "We are! Professor, everyone is waiting for us -- "

"Plans change." Phineas snapped, levelling the staff threateningly. The bottle was an indistinct bulge in the breast of his coat. "And they're waiting for me, not you, and they can damn well wait a little longer. Get to it!"

"Professor, _please_, m-maybe I should go on ahead and -- "

"You'll go and do what I told you to do, or I'll ship you back to that rat-infested little hovel you come from and you'll never find work again." Phineas said coldly. Jacobson gave the older man one last, pleading look before he fled to do as he was asked, as though he had gnolls nipping at his heels.

"Well." Gunderson said into the silence, shifting with a creak. "I s'pose it's just ye and me headin' on, girl."

And Jezra realised everyone was staring at her.

What she wanted to say was, "Bugger off. I'm not playing anybody's hero."

What she _needed _to say was, "Leave me alone. Can't you see I can't _be _a hero?"

What she _said _was, "I guess I'd best go and get me things then too, aye?"

Phineas smirked knowingly, and Jezra found herself liking the man even less. Deekin, however, capered with delight before her. "This bes more than Deekin could hope for! You and gnome lady really help Deekin finds his Boss? . . . and smelly old man and mean young one." he added almost reluctantly. It was clear he was less than enthusiastic about having Phineas along for company.

"Aye, we'll get yer Boss and say g'bye." Jezra muttered, heading around to the luggage with the creature on her heels. They passed Jacobson, puffing and red-faced as he hauled along two heavy packs, and she somehow doubted she'd see Phineas carrying one before the day was out.

She couldn't explain _why _she was helping. She didn't want to; that much was certain. But she knew she was expected to, knew Errigal had somehow known she would come along, and for some reason she couldn't place, she didn't want the other woman thinking ill of her.

The whole situation did not improve her mood.

"Here." Jezra said, remembering something as the kobold helped her untie her own pack from the back. "Ye said ye wanted help findin' yer Boss and her _friends_. Who else we goin' after aside from that Xanos bugger?"

Deekin's eyes rolled towards her. "Oh," he said flippantly, "just the Boss' dragon."

----------

**XANOS**

It was said that there were few things noisier than a half-orc barbarian in the woods.

Adding a pseudodragon to the mix seemed to dispell that theory.

"You ain't go no idea where yer goin'!" the little creature bawled, surprisingly loudly given it's small statue. It was very fond of it's own voice, and frequently made use of it at the highest decibles it could manage. "Yer lost, admit it!"

"Xanos admits no such thing!" the half-orc leading the way through the underbrush snapped back irritably. "The only thing I admit to is bewilderance for Twen's fondness for small, loud-mouthed lizards."

The pseudodragon, Skald by name, although Xanos rarely referred to him as anything other than 'the creature' or 'flying meat', crowed with laughter, brown, leathery wings carrying him a safe distance above and out of the half-orc's range. "Oh, like yer one to talk! Lookit you! You ain't got scales, but you got the biggest trap I've ever seen!"

Ignoring the jibe, Xanos pressed onward. Ever since they had arrived in the woods hours ago, he had made a point of heading due west. He believed if you followed one direction long enough, you were bound to come across a road or some other form of civilization. If there was one benefit to humans, it was that they were as numerous as flies on a ten day old pig carcass. At least in Hilltop, they had known enough to keep to themselves.

Now, however, with the daylight fading and nothing else but the chattering infernal magical creature for company -- aside from his own great intellect, of course -- Xanos would even have taken the vagabond halflings who had taken them to the desert over this. He counted himself lucky to be alive. He wondered if he could say the same for Twen and the kobold.

As if reading his thoughts, Skald mused aloud, "I wonder where the elf is. Shouldn't we be lookin' for the elf? She's got all the cash, yeah? Not sayin' I blame her, I always thought you did have sticky fingers . . . "

"We _are _looking for the elf." Xanos snapped, swinging one massive fist irritably overhead that the creature easily dodged. "At least, Xanos is. I cannot say the same for you."

"I'm lookin'!" Skald said, hurt. "Ain't I been lookin'? I flew into that one hollow tree a ways back, been callin' _all _the time . . . I wonder where Deekin's got to? I liked Deekin."

"Yes, yes. Of course you did. You who lack the brainpower of a common sewer rat! You are supremely useless as a familiar. If Twen had anything greater than a pebble rattling about in her skull, she would have traded you in for something useful like a bat or a panther long ago and heeded my advice."

"Can't hold a conversation with a bat or a panther." Skald said thoughtfully, completely missing the intended insult. "All ya can do is clean up after 'em. Me, I takes care of myself . . . I wonder where the elf _is_? She's got all my snacks . . . "

As the creature chattered on, Xanos sighed and tried his best to lose it in the looming darkness. It was looking up to being a long night.


	6. Chapter Five A Quiet Little Madness

These Roads We Walk - Chapter Five - A Quiet Little Madness

----------

**TWEN**

_No matter what situation you find yourself in, there is always a way out, even if it might not be very obvious or easy at first._

Although Twen's father had been a baker, he had always been fond of imparting pearls of wisdom with great gravity to his daughter over the morning bread as though they were his own brilliant discoveries after a lifetime of hard trails and hidden wonders, rather than kneading dough each night. Perhaps if he had even found himself chained to a wall with the chill of the earth seeping into his bones and an unseen captor he might have had some more valuable advice to dispense with in her situation.

By now her eyesight had almost completely recovered, although there was little enough in the room to occupy herself with.

Apart from the corpses, of course.

If she hadn't seen the carnage wrought in the ruins beneath the Anauroch, stench ripe with the desert heat still dryly wafting down the entrance, Twen might have rebelled in a panic against her bonds, fingers curling until bones snapped into the rusted chains that bound her arms, shrieking and lashing in fear until unconsciousness claimed her. As it was, she only stared at the forms motionless on the floor with a grim sort of acceptance. Her travels had changed her slowly but surely over their course, and if she could look upon such acts now without a shed tear or a cry of fear, she wasn't sure she was changed for the better.

There were five in all, if you added up the parts strewn about haphazardly, and the one she had stumbled across where she had been captured. Twen thought most of them were human, and fairly recent; while the blood had stained the floor black and the flesh she had touched had been cool, the only odor in the air was the pungent scent of drying herbs covering up that of blood, and the cold scent of rocky earth. Nearly all of them seemed to have been killed by a massive blow to the head; the one face that was turned towards her was distorted and surely unrecogniseable even by it's own mother. The rest of it -- the arms ripped from torsos with almost casual strength, the legs broken with precision -- might have been done after death . . . at least, one could hope.

The room Twen found herself shackled in hardly seemed befitting of a madman. Although it was situated in what appeared to be a natural cave, it was -- and there was no other word for it -- absolutely homey. There was a roughly hewn wooden desk tucked against one side of the room and neatly stacked with well-cared for tomes from the mundane -- _A Wanderer's Guide to Amn ­_-- to the extraodrinary -- several so thick and spines so covered in obscure runes she could make no sense of them. A mat woven of graying but neatly trimmed water reeds and long grasses covered the center of the floor, upon which sat a small table, playing host to exactly one spoon, one foor, one knife, one goblet, and one bowl, all of which were clean and polished despite being rather battered. The small, thin bed on the opposite side of the room held clean sheets and a single pillow, and the herbs arranged around the room, woven about spikes of rock and tuckled neatly into any niche, were likely as much for their curative or cooking properties as for their decorative side. Even the bodies were almost neatly arranged, off to the side where fluids wouldn't stain the mat.

In fact, the only real sign that something was amiss in this small underground abode -- apart from the bodies -- were the dark, viscuous fluids and unidentifiable bits of matter in the large jars and bottles arranged by size on one large shelf.

And, of course, the massive, blood-stained mallet propped up against the dark opening in the corner.

Twen tried not to look at it too much. If she did, her mind began to show her the bits of white and gray stuck amidst the red.

_It is always too much to ask for a time to take a break between one disaster and another_. With a grunt of effort, Twen wrapped the lengths of chain about her hands and pulled herself to her feet unsteadily. Her captor had been thoughtful enough to leave her in chains long enough that she could sit on a small stool beneath her, but not long enough to hang herself with.

_How considerate_.

Not that it was an option. But if something wasn't done soon, her body might pursue other venues with or without her consent.

With the adrenaline of the battle coursing through her body in the aftermath, Twen had hardly realised just how badly wounded she was. What she lacked in finesse, she made up for in speed . . . but Heurodis had been able to match the agility of youth with the dangers of experience. Twen winced inwardly now, thinking both of the number of times the insane medusa had shrieked with glee as she'd sent her magics searing over Twen's body, and at the painful shocks that had coursed through her each time she'd attacked the source of Undrentide's power. She wanted nothing more than to close her eyes and sleep.

Her captor had thoughtfully patched up the more serious of her wounds with herbal salves.

It worried her.

Not, however, as much as her companions' absence did.

Twen had plunged through the Shadow Door first, urged on by Xanos' snarled commands and her own fear, and she had been certain, _certain _that both he, Deekin, and Skald had been right behind her. Even if they hadn't, Skald _should _have followed her, yanked after her by the strange magical connection they'd shared ever since Master Drogan had first taught her how to summon her familiar. But the room's quiet denied it; Skald was overly fond of both himself _and _his voice, and while he was frequently unmanageable and irksome, he would never truly leave her behind. And yet, the little creature was still alive; she would have felt his death.

Not so for Deekin and Xanos, however. While she had never really seen completely eye-to-eye with the half-orc, she doubted he would have left her, and in any case she didn't think she had been knocked unconscious. Deekin, as well, would scarcely have left her; despite Xanos' frequent proclaimations that the little kobold would flee at the first sign of danger, Deekin never had.

There had not yet been a night Twen hadn't found herself lulled to sleep around the campfire with the sounds of Xanos bickering loudly with Skald over the last scrap of meat and Deekin's hesitant attempts at restoring calm. Were they somewhere else now? Coming to find her, or at least trying to?

Or had something . . . happened?

A shuffling off to the left brought her out of her grim reverie, and Twen's head snapped in the direction of the sound. After overpowering and dragging her back here, her captor had left her alone once he'd tended to her wounds. At least, she'd assumed it was male from the voice and strength; her vision had been too damaged to see. It was impossible to keep track of time here, with nothing more than the flicker of a few small torches to keep her company, but she thought she had been here for hours at least. In that time she had strained, twisted, tested each link of her bonds, and tried in vain to summon up the reserve to manage even the smallest cantrip in an attempt to free herself, cursing -- unwisely, she knew -- several of the more unsavoury gods as she had done so.

Mere _hours _since Undrentide had fallen. It seemed inconceivable, as though she would be trapped forever on that doomed creation.

And then her captor shuffled into view, and all other thoughts were blasted from her brain with a force greater than a fireball.

She didn't even realise she was praying aloud to Lathander for the first time in years.

In her travels, and even before in the books and scrolls contained in that distant farmhouse on Hilltop, Twen had seen many things. While she had never crossed paths with one of these before, she knew it well enough from description to place it; flesh golem.

Why it revolted her so she couldn't say; travelling across the desert with the halfling caravan, they had come across a settlement of humans beset upon by the living dead. Some of those shambling creatures had been baked dry by desert heat, flesh stripped from bones by age, while still others had been fresher, turning empty eyes upon her in faces picked by vultures, moving forward drunkenly with bodies still bleeding or leaking any number of unidentifiable fluids, flesh parted from bone, but still able to move.

But even those had not evoked disgust from her, as much as a deep feeling of pity and sadness.

They had been tragedies in their way. This? This was _deliberate_.

The face was stitched with neat lines of thread, all the more out of place given the state of it's features, held in place by magics and some sort of preservative, whose pungent odor she could now smell as it approached. Skin and pieces from all races, all peoples, the jaws long and gaped in a snarl like a wolf's in a grotesquely human face. The body was too long, making it lurch forward with each ungainly step, and even as she watched it put out one overlarge hand against the wall to steady itself as it regarded her. It was powerful, definitely; the muscles were enormous on it's torso and in it's arms, but _wrong _somehow, as though some had been put together in the wrong place. Twen clamped her lips shut over the moan of disgust that threatened to escape as she noticed it's ears; the long, delicately pointed ears of her kin.

"And how are we feeling now?"

Twen's heart lurched into her throat as for an instant she thought the golem had spoken to her. Human words couldn't possibly find their way out of that deformed throat and mouth, could they? But then she noticed the tall, painfully thin human man standing behind it, smiling pleasantly at her from the doorway. He was still fairly young, dark hair only just beginning to pepper itself with strands of white, and lines etching themselves deeper about his eyes and mouth. He might have been handsome if not for how obviously malnourished he was, his belly visibly concaved through the thin material of his shirt. "I realise these aren't the most pleasant of accomodations," he said as he stepped unconcernedly around the golem, wiping his hands on a stained scrap of cloth, "but they are all I have to offer."

He bent his head to murmur something into the golem's left ear, and with a low grunt, it lurched forward past Twen, and she rolled her head to keep it in sight until it vanished around a curve in the stone walls. "I would like for you to look at me please when I am speaking to you." the man said in a stern tone, and, startled, Twen looked back. He smiled at once, and dropped the cloth in a small wooden bucket against the wall. "Thank you. What is your name, please?"

Twen didn't respond immediately. Her mind was trying too hard to dissect the situation; part of her still half believed she was laying unconscious and hallucinating atop Undrentide at Heurodis' feet. He leaned in close to her to speak; his breath was unpleasantly ripe and strangely fruity, as though he had a bowl of fruit in his belly that was just beginning to turn. "Your name, please." he said softly. "I can find out in other ways, but I advise you to talk."

Thinking of the creature out of her sight, Twen said aloud, "Twen Brangwin."

He smiled, pleased. "Thank you, Twen. Where are you from? I shall ask you to remember what I have said. Can we keep things pleasant, do you think?"

Swallowing dryly, Twen said, "Hilltop."

Incredibly, he nodded, as though he understood, although few people had ever heard of the place. "You are a very far way from home, Twen Brangwin. You could not have picked a better time to arrive, however."

"For you or for me?" she asked, amazed at how calmly she spoke.

He laughed. "You have a point. I suppose it is more fortuitous for me than you at that. But as I have just finished with my work for the moment, we do have some time to talk." At this, Twen's eyes rolled towards the bodies stacked on the floor, and he followed her gaze. "Oh, no. Alan did that. I asked him to, of course, but only so I could do my part." He held up his hands so she could see the drying red in the creases of his fingers and smiled. She thought his eyes, a startlingly beautiful clear green, were the maddest she had ever seen. "I'm not strong enough to do the rest. But I don't want to talk about my work, right now. I want to rest a little before I continue."

He turned and walked towards the rows of bottles on the shelves, and Twen called after him, "What work? What do you do?" when she really wanted to demand, _What have you done_?

Selecting a tall, thin bottle he glanced back over his shoulder. "Not right now." he repeated, gently but firmly. His long, slender fingers deftly removed the stopper from the bottle, and even at this distance Twen could detect a new addition to the already unpleasant mish-mash of scents in the air; a sharp, acidic smell. He took a delicate drink and sighed, shoulders slumping with something like relief.

The golem -- Alan? -- shuffled back into view, dragging a long, flat wooden board. Twen's heart pounded once, deafeningly in her ears, as she recognised leather restraints at each end, but the creature did not yet look at her as it set about dragging the table and it's contents carefully off to one side. "Are my companions here as well?" she asked, voice a little too shrill for her liking.

The man glanced at her again -- and abruptly, Twen felt _something _in her mind, a loathsome, oily caress that wound itself with disgusting intimacy through her thoughts. It was gone even as she gasped at the contact, not noticing the musing expression on her captor's face. "A summoned pseudodragon, a half-orc, and a . . . a kobold who thinks itself a bard? No, I'm afraid they are not." he said with genuine regret. "More's the pity. I would have liked to have met them."

At the wistful expression on his face, and thinking of the strange _things _in the bottles and jars on the shelf behind him, Twen suddenly found herself glad Deekin and the others were absent.

"But you're here." he went on, expression brightening as he reached into a small, heavy pouch hanging on a rope about his waist. "And I can do this myself. Alan is a wonderful worker, but the bits and pieces I need are often of less than sterling quality. I cannot complain, as I believe I have said I am incapable of restraining the ones we have found thus far, as is Alan without . . . forcing compliance . . . but with you . . . maybe with you I will finally be able to find something of better value." And he held up two items.

Twen, whose uncle had dabbled from time to time in things of an artistic nature, recognised them at once as a chisel and a small but heavy mallet. And she thought of the cracked open heads of the bodies on the floor. "No." she said, at once, loudly but still as calmly as she could manage.

"I know." he sighed. "They never like this part. Myself, I had hoped to rest a while before I continued, but I sincerely doubt you would have lasted the night. Your wounds are not so great, but Alan is at times impetuous."

"No." Twen said again, hands balled into fists. "You cannot. No. This is not to be."

He seemed a little sad as he looked at her. "Others have said much the same, Twen Brangwin. You think yourself so different? Trust me, I am doing you a favour. Soon, you will care for nothing. And I? I will be able to return to my books . . . at least for a little while longer. Alan." he said, in a sharper voice, snapping his fingers. He pointed at the slab of wood now lying in the center of the room, and at once the golem turned toward's Twen; the touch of it's hands was loathsome on her skin as it unlocked her bonds, unmoved by her struggles.

"I did not come so far for this to be the end of it." Twen gasped, angry through her fear. The golem pressed her down hard on her belly on the slab, fastening her arms and legs in place with surprising dexterity even as she tried to twist away.

"Do any of us?" her captor said regretfully as her head was turned roughly to one side. She found herself staring at the desk as a fifth strap was placed painfully tight about her head. "If it is any consolation, I do not enjoy the menial tasks beforehand as I do the after effects." The position of his voice had shifted now, and Twen realised he was kneeling over her. She felt his fingers almost tenderly part her hair, and then the chill touch of the chisel on her scalp. "It was nice to meet you, Twen Brangwin of Hilltop. I suppose you seem a nice enough young woman. I shall be sure to send my condolances to your loved ones."

"No." Twen said again, horror leaking all the strength from her voice. She had survived J'Nah, survived Undrentide, survived all manner of beast and treachery for this? To die for a cause she would never understand, a forgotten corpse on the floor of this place? Her eyes rolled in a panic about the room even as she strained against her bonds. Her gaze landed on the books on the desk, and at this level, she recognised the runes and writing covering the spine of one of the largest as Netherese. "Undrentide has risen and fallen again!" she shrieked in desperation, loud enough to ring her own sensitive ears though not loud enough to mask the sound of her heart.

She drew in breath and waited for the first blow of the mallet.

Silence.

Then; "I have heard many a plea in my lifetime, Twen. Yours is surely the oddest."

"It is _true_." Twen spat, bitter with fear. And then, before she could draw breath to continue, she felt it again.

That feeling like a slick of oil inside her mind, invading and encompassing and demanding. It shoved it's way so violently inside her that she cried out in pain although she could not hear it, odd memories and flashes appearing before her eyes until she felt sick with it all. When it was over, she lay gasping and trembling on the wooden slab, hair plastered to her forehead with sweat.

"How very interesting." Her captor's voice floated down from above now; he had stood, and she realised she no longer felt the press of the chisel against her skull. "It seems you believe it to be true, at least. Alan, keep an eye on her, if you will. Do not touch her. I must verify this."

And Twen found herself watching as his bare, dirty feet left the room.

She tried to form a plan, anything, thoughts still jumbled from the intrusion. _Not long, not long, how long do I have_? she thought.

From behind her, Alan let out a rumbling growl.

----------

**XANOS**

The night had completely claimed the woods and they had been travelling unsteadily westward for several hours before Xanos realised something.

He spun about and levelled a finger at the startled pseudodragon who had been flying behind him, jabbing at the creature's snout angrily. "You! Beast! You have been allowing Xanos to make a fool of himself!"

"Me?!" Skald said indignantly, puffing out his small chest. He never failed to believe himself as intimidating as any real dragon. He, at least, was reassurance Xanos had done the wise thing in his youth and refused a familiar. "I ain't been doin' nothin'! You make a fool outta yerself all on yer lonesome, you don't need my help! . . . not that I couldn't do it better." he added as an afterthought.

"Do not toy with me, you flying piece of carrion." Xanos snarled, voice surprisingly low and silkly in a frightening rumbling whisper. For once, Skald looked slightly nervous. "You and Twen are linked as surely as you are with your own stench. You could easily have sensed where the elf is, but instead you have allowed Xanos to spend hours wandering about in this godsforsaken tangle of dirt and twings! Xanos hopes you have enjoyed your little joke, because it will be the last before I wrap my hands around your useless neck!"

Puffing with alarm, Skald flew back out of reach. In the gloom, his wiry shape was little more than another tangle of branches, even if accompanied by the steady beat of wings. "You ain't! You wouldn't! 'Cause she'd be _mad_ at you, and I ain't done pulled _no_ jokes today!" His head drooped suddenly, and he regarded Xanos with what appeared to be genuine misery from one yellow eye. "You don't think I been tryin'? I can't feel _nothin_' . . . it's like I got a wet blanket thrown over me. Ya don't think . . . she's . . . maybe . . . well . . . "

Xanos was silent for a long moment before he finally grunted and turned away. "If she was, I can assure you that you would be blessedly _silent_."

The thought had occured to him as well.

Xanos had been in an increasingly foul mood throughout the hours he had spent shoving aside tree limbs and stubborn bushes, and he honestly didn't think it would have been much improved even if Skald hadn't been along for the trip -- although the burrs that had found their way into his britches on more than one occasion or worked their way underneath his armor could have been done without. The frigid air of Hilltop and it's seemingly incessant snow had hardly been pleasant, but at least it was familiar; after months of travel and being shunted from one extreme to another, Xanos was rapidly losing the small taste for travel and new places he'd had to begin with.

Things could have been worse. At least the summoned beast was easily distracted, and Xanos had been able to find a healing potion hidden in a tangle of cloth at the bottom of his pack that had taken care of the worst of his injuries, as well as a wrapped portion of dried meat for rations that he had been careful not to mention to the little beast. And speaking of the beast, he was certain he was better off at this time of night, able to easily see the overhanging branches that caught the blasted creature by surprise, and avoid treacherous dips in the ground that might have snapped the ankle of a less wary traveller. All in all, he had to admit, he was better off than he might have been. After all, hadn't he seen worse training sessions under the tutelage of Drogan?

_That old dwarf . . . _

Xanos didn't realise he'd stopped until Skald called, "What is it?"

"Nothing." Xanos replied gruffly, surging forward with renewed vigor, quickly enough that Skald nearly found himself snapped out of the air by the branches the half-orc viciously shoved aside.

There had been things . . . left unsaid between himself and his old mentor. And although Xanos had made an effort to express similar gratitude towards the elf before they had climbed towards Heurodis -- had it really only been hours ago? -- it would have been a gross shortcoming of his own to think that she had survived the ensuing battle only to be struck dead by a wayward streak of wild magic. The kobold was of little consequence; there were dozens more like him in caves riddled throughout Toril.

At least, so he told himself grimly.

_You had best not have the audacity to die, elf. _

"You will not die until I've had the chance to berate you for doing so." Xanos muttered aloud.

Sounding slightly cheered, Skald said, "That's the spirit."


	7. First Interlude

These Roads We Walk -- First Interlude

Author's Note: We'll get back to the rest of the story in the next update, which will be much longer than these planned interludes. For now, a seemingly unrelated event.

----------

**ELSEWHERE -- ???**

The dragon yelped and whined more like a dog than the creature it was, battering itself anxiously against the wards and protective magical shields that lined the enclosure. It was young and stupid, mind stunted by constant magical experimentation, and would never achieve the greatness of it's cousins, would likely be killed for it's disfigured mind to hide any disgrace to the species if it crossed path with another of it's kin. It was still massive and deadly, however, and it's talons scrabbled at the rock floor, gouging out chunks in it's eagerness. The keening it made was almost deafening in the space, and ropes of saliva spurred on by long periods of starvation hung from it's open jaws.

The tall, thin man tilted his head back towards the lip of the pit. "I'd really rather you didn't do this."

"I'm sure you would." came the ingratiating, mellifluous voice from above. "What a pity I have to anyway."

The thin man's companion snorted. "Don't waste your time with that one. He'd sooner lick the hind end of a dwarf than he would turn against his master."

"I know." said the thin man, almost apologetically. "But I had to give him the chance. How would you feel if later he said we'd never given him the opportunity."

Another snort, this one even more disdainful. "I'd say, rather pleased with myself."

The dragon opened it's jaws and belched forth a steam of acid in frustration. Although it was ineffective against the wards that still held it back from the two figures less than fifty feet away, it was still potent enough to slough the skin off the body of a man.

"Is this how you thought it would end?" came the voice from above again, inquiringly. "I'd like to know, so I can tell people when they ask what became of you."

"No." said the thin man honestly. "And I still don't. We'll find them, you know."

There was a speculative sort of silence -- a silence if one didn't count the din from the increasingly frustrated dragon. It snapped and bit at it's own flanks in anger, eyes bright with madness and hunger.

"No." said the voice finally, with a note of satisfaction. "You know, I really don't think you will. I'm dreadfully sorry about this."

"This," said the thin man's companion to nobody in particular in tones of deep disgust, "is just one of the reasons I hate mages. But only one."

"You'll have to tell me about the rest some time." commiserated the thin man.

An instant later, as the magical wards were dropped, and the dragon screamed in triumph, thundering forward ungainly with none of the grace of it's kind, both men bolted in opposite directions.

For a time, there was only chaos.


	8. Chapter Six Some Kind of Wonderful

These Roads We Walk - Chapter Six - Some Kind of Wonderful

Author's Note: One creative note; I think this is probably my favourite chapter to date because I had the easiest time writing it, and I get to badmouth paladins. One of my favourite things about writing Neverwinter Nightsian stories is coming up with odd little phrases for the characters to say that fit the world -- such as the "sooner lick the hind end of a dwarf" line from the interlude. Also, this chapter was written entirely to one of my favourite songs on repeat -- "Chain of Fools" by Aretha Franklin, which somehow fits. I'm going to stop doing author's notes now for the rest of this story, because I think it detracts from the overall experience. Just a heads-up, that if anything odd happens, rest assured it has a reason that will be explained at another point in the story. A place for everything and everything in it's place; the interlude WILL be explained and have a connection to the main story, but . . . It's all about pacing and love, beh-beh.

----------

**JEZRA**

"Deekin been wondering . . . did he tells you about the time he and Boss fights big scary manticore under desert? Ummmm, half-orc be there too, but Deekin just remembers him complaining lots . . . "

"Yeah, ye did."

"Oh."

Silence.

Then:

"Did Deekin maybe tells you about the time he and Boss gets turned to stone by scary snake-hair lady? Deekin not like that so much . . . he think it be very interesting experience, but . . . had to go to the bathroom after a while."

"Aye, I remember."

"Oh."

Again, silence.

Then:

"Did Deekin -- "

Spinning around, her pack nearly falling from her back, Jezra snapped, "Yes! Yes, a thousand times yes! We've been o'er yer little adventure more times than a dwarf o'er a dragon's treasure!"

Silence.

The rest of the group had stopped moving as well, and had turned to regard her; Errigal with mild amusement, Jacobson alarmed and clutching at his chest from her outburst, and Phineas smirking in the eerie glow of blue-white light that seemed to hover contained within his gnarled hand. Deekin blinked his small eyes at her in surprise, before dipping his head dejectedly, heaving a heavy sigh that travelled the length of his small frame and likely managed to depress the small patch of clover he stood upon. "Oh." was all he said, managing to infuse that single word with enough hurt and remorse that Jezra thought he might as well even the most pious paladin would have looked down his nose at her for inspiring it.

The truth was, it wasn't even the kobold's incessant chatter that was getting on her nerves. After all, hadn't she listened to even longer tall tales told just as exuberantly (and certainly more dirty) from one Tomi Undergallows for months on end not too long ago? But the day itself was beginning to wear on her.

Leaving behind Aribeth, the uncommonly hard-eyed fallen paladin she had become in that cell deep beneath castle Neverwinter, had been perhaps the hardest thing Jezra had ever done, harder even than watching the thatched, haphazard roofs of her home village recede as she'd ridden away on the back of a crop wagon years ago. There was no love lost between the two women, although Jezra regretted now every arrogant time she had rolled her eyes, turned her back, or snapped off a reply to the elf. They were worlds apart, easily -- one graceful, well bred and kind, the other displaced outside her own home and with all the temperment of a paladin who had just squatted to relieve himself in a bush of nettles in the wild.

Jezra wondered if they'd gone ahead and done it already, and wether they had done it over the same spot Aribeth's own lover had died not so long ago in the same forsaken twisted plot.

She shuddered involuntarily and turned it into a sigh. She didn't want to be tramping about the woods after someone she didn't know, with people she'd only just met, and an overeager kobold at her heels. She _wanted, _in fact, to be as far removed from other people as she could get, from their unconscious cruelties, thoughtlessness, blindness, all of it. She wanted to be alone with nothing but the sounds of the woods for company, and menial tasks as she set up her home to prevent her from thinking.

Instead, she said, rather gloomily, "Why don't ye tell me about cookin' for the halflin's caravan again?"

Immediately, Deekin perked up, beaming an alarming toothy smile up at her. "Okay! Okay, Deekin likes talkings about that!"

"I know." Jacobson muttered ahead.

"Then you'll get plenty of time to do so." Phineas said, dropping his pack with a loud crunch of underbrush and straightening with a grimace. "This looks like a well enough place to spend the night."

Deekin looked taken aback. "But . . . but Deekin thought we were going to finds the Boss?"

The old scholar snorted. He rummaged inside his coat, now somewhat grimier than before, and emerged with another small bottle. Jezra was amazed the man didn't clink when he walked . . . and that he could walk at all. "We'll find your elf, and her little friends. But we can't do a thing in this dark. We'd stumble blind into a trolls arse, or bring another happy little group of gnolls down on us with the amount of light we'd need to search well. No, better to make camp now and resume again in the light. If she's not in the belly of an ogre now or roasting over an orcish campfire, she'll survive the few hours until dawn."

The kobold didn't look the least bit reassured by this, but he didn't try to stop them as they began to break camp. Of them all, Errigal seemed best prepared. From a suspiciously small and brightly patterned bag, she pulled chunks of bread, wax-wrapped pieces of cheese, and a large, ornate flask worked with silver that Jezra saw Phineas eyeing covetously, along with several small cups. Jezra herself had flint and kindling in her pack, and after a stern look from his teacher, Jacobson reluctantly parted with several pairs of woolen, half-finger gloves to ward off the chill and a small packet of dried meat. Although it was hardly a feast, Jezra found her stomach growling appreciatively as the fire was finally built once they had cleared the area of flammable material, and Errigal had passed out the food. She kept the flask stoppered, however.

They were largely silent as they ate, and Jezra was as grateful for that as she was for the meager warmth from the flames. Saying goodbye to Gunderson -- who frustratingly hadn't seemed at all surprised by her decision -- and watching the back of his carriage vanish down the road, leaving her with these people, had been hard.

Not as hard, however, as it had been putting up with Jacobson.

Jezra was willing to accept that the boy was young and unused to travel. Still, it had been difficult to resist the temptation to give him a clip around the head with her fist each time he opened his mouth to complain, which was more and more frequent as the hours drew on and night approached. Phineas, for his part, hadn't bothered to resist the temptation at all, and the boy's frequent whining was usually interrupted early on by the flat of his mentor's hand against the side of his head. While some people might have frowned at this, Jezra at least understood; better that the boy be prepared for the hardship of the world by learning that you didn't always get your way and complaining never solved anything from an ill-tempered master instead of a pack of orcs.

When they had demolished the bread, cheese, and meat between them all -- Jezra reluctantly parting with half of her own with a sigh at Deekin's pitiable looks -- Errigal finally uncorked her flask and set about pouring a tiny amount of golden liquid in each of the five cups. As she poured, she spoke to Deekin. "So. Tell us about this Boss of yours. What makes her so special that you aren't off writing that book of yours in the cushiest Inn you can find?"

Blinking sleepily, Deekin regarded the gnome across the flames. "Deekin owes Boss for helping him gets free of Old Master . . . and for stopping big half-orc from hitting him lots, too."

Phineas snickered, although his eyes were locked on the cups in Errigal's hands.

"I'm sure." the gnome said dryly, the firelight especially unkind to the horrors of her face as she passed out the cups. "But there must be more to it than that. What's she like?"

Jezra couldn't have cared less. With food in her belly and warmth nearby, she was feeling pleasantly drowsy. She took one of the cups from Errigal and peered inside, sniffing curiously. A faint, strange aroma of spice, woodsmoke, and honey greeted her.

Deekin peered into his own cup before responding. He seemed to be choosing his words carefully. "Um . . . Boss is very nice, but . . . she be very _quiet _lots, too. Deekin thinks she be rememberings home lots. Deekin understands that. He thinks of old cave lots sometimes, too, when he feels very small and very afraid." He paused, taking a small sip from his cup, and blinking once before continuing. "Umm . . . Deekin thinks sometimes Boss worries too much about what other peoples thinks of her, and always tries to be very quiet and very polite around peoples, so she not always be very happy, unless it just be her and Deekin and little dragon. And Xanos." he added, as if reluctant to attribute even a little of his Boss' good moods to an irritable half-orc.

"Yes, fine, of course. But tell me; is she very pretty?" Jacobson asked, speaking up for the first time since they'd made camp. He looked embarassed when both Jezra and Phineas laughed. "Well . . . well elves usually are, aren't they?" he asked defensively.

"If she is," Phineas smirked, draining his cup and licking his lips, "you wouldn't need to worry about it. Even if her head isn't so big from all her 'adventures' that she needs a spell of grease to get through a doorway, one dose of you capering about and slobbering all over her boots will ruin your chances."

Jacobson mumbled in embarassment, colouring to the roots of his sandy hair and drawing his robes closer about himself. Deekin, however, seemed to be pondering the question. "Well . . . Deekin doesn't know so very much about that. She not have pretty scales or sharp teeth . . . but," he added, brightening, "Boss has _very _shiny hair."

Taken by surprise, Jezra burst out laughing, trailing off into giggles in the crook of her arm as she stretched out on the ground, trying to find the softest bit of earth. She felt a little drunk with the unreality of the situation even though she'd set aside her cup untouched. From the grim atmosphere of Neverwinter to supping with a kobold in one day. Whatever would Tomi say?

Looking pleased and a little emboldened by her laughter, Deekin asked, "What abouts you, Jezra? You gots lot of adventures? Seen lots of things, maybe?"

The question struck the laughter from her, and she almost snapped a reply before she bit it back, seeing the innocent curiosity in the kobold's question. She couldn't say why it was so important to her that none of these people knew where she had just come from, and what she had done. "Aye." she said instead, guardedly. "I seen a thing or two in me own day. But nothin' so very excitin'."

"If I didn't think you'd manage to bungle it up somehow," Phineas growled, unwittingly coming to her rescue from the awkward turn the conversation had taken, "I'd have a tale or two to tell you, kobold. About planes of fire and worlds of doors I've walked through."

Deekin seemed to consider this a moment before replying. "Deekin not knows about any of that . . . but one time, Old Master be really sick. He not do much for days but groan lots and roll around on cave almost squishings lots of little kobolds. Nobody knows what be wrong until finally one night Old Master starts making really scary sounds before he finally spits up old angry Lich right in front of Deekin. Old Master steps on Lich before it can do anything, though, and tells Deekin that it not always such a good idea to eat somethings just to carry out a threat or maybe prove a point." He paused and took in their incredulous faces before asking tentatively, "You ever sees anything like that?"

To Jezra's great surprise, Phineas' head was bowed when she looked at him, and his shoulders were shaking with laughter. When he finally looked up, he was smiling for once. "No." he said with a grunt and another barked laugh. "I can't say that I have." Even Jacobson finally relaxed and chuckled a little.

Rolling over with a sigh and putting her back to the fire, Jezra closed her eyes. Years of weariness seemed to be weighting her eyelids down, and she thought she was so worn out by the unexpected events of the day she might be finally blessed with a dreamless sleep. No dreams of the sick and dying calling for mercy on the streets of Neverwinter behind her eyes, no phantom smells of burning corpses lingering in her nostrils . . .

. . . maybe, for once, not even the haunting image of Morag's twisted and vile, hideously alien features looming inches from her own, spitting curses and damnation in her face as clawed hands tightened about her throat . . .

She shuddered.

Behind her, there was a sudden rustling, and she heard Errigal ask, "Where are you going?"

Raising her head reluctantly, Jezra saw Deekin standing at the edge of the fire's light looking back. "Deekins gots to, um . . . he . . . er . . . Deekin needs to go." he said finally, looking distinctly embarassed.

Phineas snorted, and Jacobson grimaced. Errigal, however, only nodded, and returned to the small, leather-bound book she had taken out of somewhere. As the kobold pushed as quietly as he could through the brushes, Jezra lay her head back down and closed her eyes again. Already, sleep pulled at the edges of her mind, and she found herself not caring about the murmured conversation behind her between Jacobson and Phineas, or the soft rustling as Errigal turned pages, or even the hard ground beneath her body. She was so very, very tired.

And, after all; she had slept in worse places.

Much worse.

----------

**DEEKIN**

His business finished, Deekin stood for a moment in amidst the trees, enjoying the play of the cool night air over his scales. The glow from the campfire was barely visible, but he knew he'd be able to find his way back. What he really wanted to do was resume searching for his Boss, but he had to admit the disagreeable smelling human was right; it would be best to search in the light of day. Besides, he knew, his Boss could surely handle anything.

A sudden movement at the corner of his eye, however, made him jump. Twisting his head about in alarm, he saw a large, dark, hunched shape emerge some distance away in the moonlight. It moved . . . _wrong _somehow, and it's movements were accompanied by a disturbing snuffling and grunting. As Deekin watched, transfixed and perfectly still by some deeper instinct, he saw the shape spread it's arms. There was a metallic clanking, and something bright glinted in the light as it fell. And then, slowly, the figure turned and shuffled back into the darkness.

Hardly daring to breathe, Deekin stood until the sounds of it's passage had vanished completely. He knew what he _should _do was return to the camp and tell the others; maybe Phineas and Jacobson weren't his favourite people, but he still didn't want either of them or Jezra or Errigal to be surprised in the night. Instead, however, insatiably curious, he crept forward, keen eyes warily combing the darkness as he moved towards where he had seen the mysterious items fall.

Abruptly, he caught his breath as he came upon them.

Tentatively, he reached out with one claw to caress the familiar leather wrappings over the hilt of a broken and dirtied longsword, laying on a pile of shards and a light, deceptively delicate looking material that could only be elven chainmail, bloodied and scored.

"Boss?" he whispered in horror.


	9. Chapter Seven Through the Looking Glass

These Roads We Walk - Chapter Seven - Through the Looking Glass

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**JEZRA**

Although the light lent by Phineas' spell gave everything a ghoulish tint, lending shadows and eerie casts to friendly faces, Jezra thought the scene would have been grim even in broad daylight. She had been groggy, yanked out of a deepening doze when the kobold had stumbled back into the camp, squealing urgently and almost incoherent, but she was wide awake now.

She thought she might never get used to death.

"You're quite certain these articles belong to your boss?" Errigal asked. The gnome was circling the items heaped on the forest floor, hands clasped behind her back, head tilted forward. "They don't look very unique to me."

"Elven chainmail . . . " Jacobson pointed out in a murmur. The young man looked pale and oddly solemn, thin hands tucked into the long sleeves of his robe.

"Plenty of elves in the world." Jezra pointed out, more to keep Deekin from looking any more ill.

"This be Boss' chainmail!" he insisted, although he looked as though he would have preferred it wasn't. He pointed with one clawed finger towards a long, ugly looking scratch in the metal. "See? That where Boss falls down hole into stinger lair. Rude half-orc laughs lots . . . until he falls on head going down after."

Ignoring the potential segue into another story, Jezra bent down for a closer look -- the kobold didn't look interested in telling stories at the moment anyway. There was blood on the chainmail, oh yes -- and across the broken blade of the sword that lay nearby as well, but across the flat of the blade instead of the edge, as though it had been dripped or splattered. Reluctantly, she reached out and touched a long smear, grimacing at the slightly tacky feel that remained. It was nearly dry, but still fresh enough to leave a faint reddish tinge on her fingers. She wiped them hard on her legs, glaring up at Phineas, daring him to say something about her discomfort.

Phineas, however, didn't seem to be paying attention. He was staring from beneath lowered, bushy brows at Jacobson, who was shifting uncomfortably under his mentor's gaze. "Well?" the scholar demanded, brandishing the handful of oddly limpid light in the young man's direction.

"Er, yes?" Jacobson said, doing his best to look helpful.

Judging by the heavy snort Phineas gave, Jezra thought Jacobson was probably lucky the older man had his other hand full carrying his gnarled staff. "We have here," he said in an exaggeratedly informatory tone, as though speaking to a rather simple child, "items belonging to one person who is mysteriously absent. Do you think you could do what you're useful for, or are we going to stand here gaping at them until the wind changes and we find ourselves stuck this way?"

Jacobson gave a small jump, and even with the glow from the light playing across his features, Jezra could see him blush. "Oh! Oh, of course, Professor, I'm terribly sorry. I wasn't thinking. I'll, um, I'll get right to it, then, shall I?" At Phineas' withering look, the man mumbled another apology as he dropped to his knees.

Reaching out, Jacobson ran his hands gingerly over the items, and winced slightly as though he had cut himself, although his hands had not yet touched the blade. Frowning, Jezra cocked her head as the man closed his eyes and began breathing deeply and slowly. His face contorted for a moment into an expression of supreme concentration, before suddenly slackening. He looked calm, almost serene, so deeply so that for a moment Jezra thought he had fallen asleep. Standing here, amidst the twisted shadows of trees with bloodied remnants on the ground -- maybe this elven hero existed after all -- Jezra couldn't see how that was possible. Sleep was the farthest thing from her mind.

"Um," Deekin ventured after a moment, voice pitched so low it was almost a hiss, "what he be doings?"

"Scrying." came Errigal's absent reply. She had reached out to finger the edge of the chainmail. "Good to see the boy is keeping himself useful."

Phineas grunted. He was watching Jacobson with a critical eye, a predatory gleam in his gaze. "He does his job when he remembers to. He'll never be half the seer his mother was."

Jezra looked back at Jacobson to see what his reaction to this statement would be, but he seemed largely unaware. His eyes rolled underneath their closed lids, and Jezra thought she might have heard him murmur something. His lips were moving almost imperceptibly. The hair prickled on the back of her neck as she knelt down beside him -- Jezra had never been comfortable with magic in the best of times. "What, Jarred?" she asked quietly, head bent towards him. "What'd ye say?"

This close, she could hear him muttering faintly, " . . . verified the matter. What confuses me is your sudden appearance here. It is timely, yes, and certainly fortuitous, perhaps in more ways than I had initially believed. I do enjoy a good mind game, and the ancient Netherese are undeniably fascinating . . . perhaps . . . Alan, bring me that vial . . . carefully, carefully . . . " In Jacobson's temple, his pulse fluttered wildly and unevenly, as though with fear, and Jezra moved back uneasily.

Phineas smiled unpleasantly down at her. "What's the matter, girl? No stomach for something you can't stick a blade in?"

Ignoring him, Jezra pushed to her feet. The truth was, she had seen more than her share of Seers at work in her time. Her own village had had one . . . supposedly, anyway. A large blind woman named Marta, who had navigated her way about even familiar territory with ease. She had claimed that the second sight she possessed allowed her to move about so easily; privately, even at a young age when she had been most impressionable, Jezra had thought the woman's success had been largely due to the talkative crow that was always been perched on her shoulder. Regardless, Marta had been consulted on everything from crops to goblin raids, and she had always put on the same mystical, breathy act for each prediction.

In contrast, travelling through Luskan at one point, Jezra and her then-companion Tomi Undergallows had encountered a little girl, barely older than five, who had looked up from her childish play to inform Jezra with cheerful, yet chilling certainty that Aribeth was "changing faces", without even knowing whom Jezra was looking for, or what was even then happening at the top of the Host Tower. Jezra had also seen spells cast by mages in Neverwinter's last, desperate siege against Morag's forces, trying to discern the enemy's movements. And, maybe, on some level, Phineas was right; magic had always alarmed her a little, a gift so seemingly temporarily given by the Gods. She would much rather have put her faith in the heavy weight of a blade in her palm, or even her own fist. Having to rely on magic for anything was always more than a little unnerving.

She had to admit, however, she would never have imagined Phineas's constantly whining assistant to possess any sort of scrying abilities. She had always thought that someone who could see the future or even the present, _truly _see it, would be a humble person, beaten grim by the realisation of what lay ahead. This was a pampered, complaining young man who, although crumpling easily under the stern glare of Phineas, was still unwilling to believe life didn't have some perfect plan in store for him. She glanced at Deekin, but the kobold seemed almost enraptured by Jacobson's talents, even as dull a display as it was, and had leaned forward until his scaled snout was inches from the young man's face.

Suddenly, Jacobson shivered all over, opening his eyes. "She's alive." he said, too loudly, and jumped at his own voice. He looked down, saw his hands were covering a large, darkened stain on the chainmail, and snatched them back, nervously wiping them on his robes. He looked around, blinking rapidly. "I think."

"Boss be alive?" Deekin cried rapturously, and this time even Phineas jumped as the kobold's voice startled a flock of pheasant out from beneath the underbrush. "Where she be?"

Jacobson still seemed disoriented as he staggered to his feet, although he was recovered enough to manage a twinge of distaste around his lips as Deekin clutched at his robes. "I don't know. It was . . . it was very dark."

"Well," Phineas said nastily, "that narrows things down _considerably_."

Deekin had begun gathering up the bloodied items from the ground however, and was placing them with infinite care into his pack. The sword he wrapped in a piece of torn, stained cloth. "Even if ye get that reforged," Jezra said, indicating the broken blade, "it'll never be the same."

"Deekin knows." the kobold said. "But, Boss not likes to lose things . . . even things that maybe not works so good anymore."

"It'll only weigh ye down." she warned. "I ain't got any room in me own pack for it."

"Deekin be used to carrying heavy things." Deekin assured her. "Lots of times, when Boss not be lookings, Xanos tries to put his things in Deekin's pack so he not have to carry so very much. And, sometimes, Boss' little dragon tries to sleep in Deekin's pack, when he be very lazy."

"I wouldn't have stood for that."

"Deekin not minds so very much." Deekin said, giving her a bright, toothy grin. His mood seemed to have improved over the news of his Boss, scant as it was. "Everybody always says Deekin be real little and not good for much. But Deekin is good at lots of things, even little things like carrying heavy stuffs sometimes. Old Master always tells Deekin, 'Deekin, whatever you does, do it well'. So Deekin always does the best he can, even if Boss not threaten to squish Deekin like Old Master did."

To this impromptu little speech, Jezra could not find a suitable reply.

Apparently oblivious to this exchange, Errigal was looking at Jacobson. "Was it a nighttime darkness?" she asked.

"I . . . no, I don't think so." Jacobson replied, brow furrowing.

"Then," the gnome pressed, "mightn't it be underground?"

"I suppose so . . . "

"Then," Errigal said, "I think we might be well suited to investigate that, don't you?" And she pointed off through the trees.

Phineas raised his handful of light in that direction, and they all looked. There, barely discernable from the darkness and mottled ground, was the open mouth of a small cave.

"That be the direction thing that leaves Boss' stuffs be goings!" Deekin said excitedly. He had shouldered his pack already, and, true to his words, seemed to be having no trouble hopping from foot to foot under the extra weight. "Then, that maybe where Boss be?"

Phineas cocked a watery but keen eye at Jacobson. "And what about Messarmos?"

Jacobson hesitated, and Jezra could see him weighing his options before he replied. "No. I don't think I saw any half-orcs . . . but . . . there was one very large shape, and . . . as I said, it was very dark."

"Rude half-orc almost always be with Boss." Deekin said flippantly. He seemed anxious to get going, and even as he spoke, he was edging in the direction of the cave. Jezra had to admire the little creature's devotion; in some ways, good ways, he did remind her a little of Tomi. "He not likes to leave her alone very much."

"And why is that?" Errigal asked, looking interested.

Deekin looked blank momentarily before shrugging. "Well, like Deekin says, Boss be very nice . . . but she also be the only one who carries the golds."

Jezra eyed the cave with distaste. To enter, she would have to walk in a painful, back bending crouch, and Phineas and Jacobson would actually have to crawl. When she had been a child, she had spent hours climbing through the small, unoccupied natural caves that had dotted the countryside with the other village children, happy times where every bug, every odd-shaped rock was a wonder. These days, however, her reaction to enclosed spaces was less than eager.

"Let's get going then." Phineas snapped, shoving Jacobson in the small of the back with the rounded head of his staff. "I'd rather be crawling through dirt than I would standing around here doing nothing."

With a happy yelp, Deekin scurried towards the entrance of the cave, and, reluctantly, Jezra followed. The little kobold seemed so certain he was going to find his Boss.

For her part, Jezra thought the hungry mouth of the cave might snap shut behind them.

----------

**DEEKIN**

Although Deekin had not had to crouch nearly as much as his companions, emerging into a larger space after the long, cramped tunnel was still pleasing after the hours they had spent grimly traversing it, largely silent except for a few pained mutterings. Deekin would gladly have spent days in the tunnel if it meant finding his Boss; after all, hadn't she herself climbed down through hostile kobold warrens, darkened corridors and more just to win Deekin's freedom from the great white wyrm, Tymofarrar?

He considered it the least he could do. Besides, with the small meal from the fire earlier still a pleasant weight in his belly, he felt things were looking up.

Deekin straightened in the larger space, breathing deep the scent of rock and dirt. While the others might have felt claustrophobic, Deekin had spent much of his days as a little kobold scurrying through caverns and more in the dark, and to him, the earth was almost like a giant, comforting mother's womb about him, even if he had gained a new appreciation for faraway places. Several times during the long travel through the earth, he had stopped to become entranced by an odd formation of rock or a cluster of mushrooms until Jezra had prodded him none-too-gently in the hindquarters to move him forward. In many ways, she reminded him of both the Boss, and Xanos, willing to humour him, but only up to a point.

Deekin's keen eyes could make out most of the cavern, and although it appeared largely empty save for a few fallen, leaning chunks of rock, his spirits remained undampened. "Come on!" he yelled happily into the tunnel. "Come on!"

Jezra emerged first, sneezing violently and sending up a large cloud of dust. She surged eagerly to her feet, straightening with a relieved sigh. "Oh, that don't feel less'n _half _good." she murmured, knuckling the small of her back. Deekin saw her large, almond-shaped eyes blink in the dark. "Although I don't think the destination was near worth the journey."

"What is it?" Jacobson called from behind Errigal as the gnome emerged. The human sounded extremely depressed, and although Deekin didn't like him very much, he still felt a twinge of sympathy. "I don't suppose it's a nymph's abode with some soft cushions and wine?"

"That depends on how often ye've taken a knock 'round your skull before lookin' at it." Jezra said wryly.

"Often enough in his case. Budge up, budge up, get a move on . . . " came Phineas's voice, sounding more irritable than usual, and Jacobson hurriedly knelt as soon as he'd climbed out to help the old human to his feet. Phineas grunted, standing with an audible crack. He looked around, scowled, then brandished the hand not holding the staff in the air. "Let's have a look at what we've gotten ourselves into."

At the first flare of the by now familiar globe of blue-white light, as the rest of the cavern came into stark relief, Deekin felt the first slight dip in his spirits.

It was completely empty.

"Figures." Jezra muttered, walking past him.

The cavern was large enough for more than a dozen fully grown humans to stand comfortably in, even with the fallen rocks, and though the walls were craggy and chipped and uneven, there didn't appear to be any small opening about. Jezra laid a slim, long-fingered hand against a slab of rock as she peered around. "Ain't nothin' here but dust and dirt." she sounded both disgusted and very tired. Deekin dipped his head sadly; although she had been short with him from time to time, Jezra seemed to be a good enough person, and besides, Deekin hated to think of anyone being angry with him.

Phineas looked around. Rather than scowling, however, he seemed intrigued. And, as Deekin watched, the old human pointed his staff in the direction of the far wall and muttered somethin in a low tone.

Recognising the twist of arcane words, Deeking turned eagerly to watch. There was nothing like a free magic show.

The end of the staff glowed briefly and faintly with a soft white light that seemed to pulse outwards like a heartbeat, running over every contour of the stone in the room like a lover's caress. It crawled up the far wall with astonishing fluidity, like a living cloak of light, and Deekin thought he saw small tendrils probing into the rocks.

And then, abruptly, the entire wall began to melt.

Jezra straightened up, eyes widening, and Deekin heard Jacobson give a shout of surprise, although Phineas's face remained deep in concentration. The rock appeared to be dissolving like ice under heat, shimmering as it went, and a dim shape began to be revealed behind it. As the last of the light faded and the rock vanished, revealing another wall several feet behind it, Deekin applauded and Phineas smirked in satisfaction. "Parlor tricks, kobold. They'll need better than that."

"What is it?" Jezra asked, cautiously approaching the object that had been revealed.

"I should think that was obvious." Errigal said, marching past her. "It's a mirror."

And so it was. Standing well over Phineas's height, it was easily the tallest mirror Deekin had ever seen. It's frame was rather plain and ordinary, wood not even polished or sanded and in fact splintered and gouged in several places, especially at the hinges that allowed the mirror to be spun overhead in place, but Deekin still thought it was interesting. He leaned closer to see wether his reflection would be distorted in the tall glass, but realised he couldn't see himself. In fact --

"Now, isn't that something." Phineas murmured, striding over and leaning forward until his hawkish nose was barely an inch from the glass, although the surface didn't fog from his exhalations. "I daresay they haven't any archives like that even in Athkatla."

Beyond the mirror was a large cavern, rough stone walls filled with shelves that looked to have been dug from the rock, and packed solid with books. Several torches, high up on the ceiling, cast a half-hearted light on the floor, where Deekin could see layers of dust and dirt disturbed by the passage of many feet. His heart gave an odd little flip at the sight of all the books; when he had still been in the service of Tymofarrar, the time he had been given to himself to read the tomes belonging to the dragon had been his happiest, turning each page carefully and lovingly even late into the night until Old Master's rumbling snores lulled him to sleep. Twen herself had been possessed of a few books or two that she had carried with her, and had allowed Deekin to read them each night they stopped, and although they had been little more than favoured childhood tales, Deekin had read each as avidly as a historian might peruse a scholar's bookbag.

By now, Jezra had clustered around as well, leaning over Deekin's head. "Magic mirrors." she said, dully. She didn't seem nearly as impressed as Deekin was. Even after travelling so far with the Boss, magic never failed to delight him.

"I think we can rule out gnolls for this." Errigal said suddenly, and Deekin jumped. He had nearly forgotten the gnome was there. Although he was thankful for her help, she was often silent for long periods of time. "Unless, Phineas, you know something I don't?"

"Nope." the old human responded, gaze still fixed on the mirror -- or was it a window, Deekin wondered? "Never seen a gnoll smart enough to manage anything like this."

"And what," Jacobson ventured, "is it?"

Phineas didn't respond immediately, stroking his grizzled chin thoughtfully. When he finally did speak, his tone was different; authoratative and informing, rather than demanding. "Look around you, Jarred. Tell me what you see."

Curious, Deekin followed the human's instructions as well. He didn't see anything of particular interest in the cavern; no crawling bugs, no odd rock formations, nothing. He glanced back at the mirror . . . and his eyes widened suddenly. "Deekin knows!" he said happily, startling them all. "That be same room we be in, only with books and shelves and torches!"

"That's -- " began Jacobson angrily.

" --- absolutely correct." Phineas cut in. Deekin thought the human might have actually smiled slightly, and he puffed out his chest with pride. "Look around. Take out the fallen rock, and this place is the exact dimensions of what you see on the other side of the mirror, down to the last crack in the floor."

Jezra looked confused. She reached out hesitantly and rapped smartly on the glass with her knuckles. "So . . . what, then? That's where the elf is?"

"Maybe."

At this, Deekin eagerly pressed his snout against the glass, but he could see no part of his missing boss. Disappointed, he looked up as Phineas grasped the edge of the frame. "We'll have to see for ourselves, then, won't we?" And he pushed on the mirror, hard, sending the glinting glass surface spinning like a top end over end.

Deekin was just about to ask what he had done when suddenly the entire world flipped upside down.


	10. Chapter Seven Old Acquaintances

These Roads We Walk - Chapter Eight - Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot

**SKALD**

There were advantages, sometimes, to being only slightly larger than the average coconut.

It was, for example, easier to steal a second portion of food unnoticed (although admittedly harder to fly sometimes). And people never really expected you to carry anything. Not to mention you usually got into shows for free.

And, of course, it was easier to keep your neck out of trouble even when you were sticking your nose into it.

Perched on the low, overhanging branch of a tree, Skald stretched his head towards the light of the fire enviously, as much to hear the low conversation better as to get a deeper noseful of the scent of the meat that was roasting on a spit. His long, pointed tongue ran the entire length of his scaled muzzle, and his stomach clenched painfully. A little under an hour ago, he had caught and devoured a small rabbit whole, roasting it with his own inner fires and pulling the meal up into the branches where Xanos was unable to snatch a piece.

Somehow, however, food was never quite as good when it wasn't stolen from someone else.

But in this instance, Skald was quite certain those gathered around the fire, backs turned towards the night, would not take kindly to even the smallest, fastest of thieves.

It was, Skald thought, extraordinarily stupid to get involved with Gnolls in any fashion. Especially five gnolls who seemed to be exceedingly ill-tempered.

Skald looked dowards, keen eyes locating Xanos crouched hidden several meters away in the dark. The half-orc motioned him onwards impatiently, and, reluctantly, Skald shuffled closer on the branch, talons digging into the stripped bark, hoping he would be mistaken for just another bat in the dark. He didn't think any of the gnolls were shaman, their fur apparently without the ritualistic painted and cracked bead-and-feather adornments, but a lucky bola or spear would strike him out of the sky as surely as a spell. Near the fire was a large sack, stitched together from an unpleasant looking patchwork of mismatched pieces of leather and hide. Every now and again, it trembled slightly, and Skald pitied whatever small animal they had caught for dinner.

Skald had never been fond of forests, and at night now, the darkness and the surrounding flora made him feel as though he was being swallowed whole. The Gnoll's fire was a bright circle of flexing light in the gloom, casting shifting shadows over the pitted trunks of trees as the creatures shifted restlessly. Powerful muscles sent the thick fur along their backs rippling, their manes standing up stiffly, as though they had dried into the position. Unlike the unwilling creatures forced into service by J'Nah, there was a deep-seated stench of death and joyous carnage about them that would never wash off in this life.

Closer now, he could hear the meat sizzling, and he swallowed as soon as he realised he was close to slavering. Noticed because of a rope of drool dropped on a furred head? The last thing he wanted to do was prove the half-orc right about his table manners.

_Smug, overbearing, green arse-for-a-face_. he thought, sulkily, although the thought perked him up almost immediately.

There was nothing quite like having a laugh at someone else's expense to cheer you up. Often, when Skald had found himself stuck inside the elf's room back at Hilltop while she exercised more patience on yet another one of Drogan's quests to prove her worth, he had found pestering the paladin and the pocket-picking dwarf (from behind the safety of a magically locked door, of course) to be a sure-fire cure for cabin fever. Lately, however, such memories hadn't done much to cheer him up. Instead of looking forward with barely restrained glee to causing uproars on quiet evening, he found himself looking towards the return to Hilltop with a deepening feeling of depression.

Was there anything left to go back to now that Drogan was gone? Although nobody had ever been particularily unfriendly towards Twen in that small, perpetually snow-covered village, Skald had the distinct impression that often Drogan Droganson had been the only reason Twen and the others had been accepted. Oh, not for race, no; elf, dwarf, gnome, even orc could find place within those walls, of that Skald was certain.

But their craft?

"People come here to forget or be forgotten." Skald recalled overhearing one day in a conversation between the elf and the local blacksmith. He had been paying only minor attention when he'd discovered the conversation was in fact not going to be about him, and had been perched nearby on a shelf, contentedly gnawing the last remains of flavour out of a scrap of old leather. "Or maybe just to start again. You can understand that, can't you?"

Thinking back now on the apprehensive, maybe even slightly accusatory looks Skald had seen lurking behind the grateful expressions of the townsfolk, he couldn't help but wonder how their attitude had changed in their absence. What thoughts had boiled. What rumours had been spread. Did they think, now, that those groomed for adventuring rather than farming attracted trouble like dwarves attracted flies?

Skald was used to being blamed for things. And to be fair, most of them had been his fault. (At least, the ones involving missing food or 'mysteriously vanishing' things that glittered.)

_But **this** wasn't our fault_. he thought. He realised that throughout his reverie, his chin had dropped lower and lower until it was actually resting between his talons clutching the branch, and below the gnolls had already fallen to tearing apart the meat, their loud snappings eerie in the darkened woods. Almost instantly forgetting his miseries, Skald watched longingly as glistening scraps of meat went into grinning muzzles; if there had been any pre-dinner conversation he had missed it.

"Didn't want deer." said one of the Gnolls suddenly, a sullen note in it's voice. "Have deer _every _night."

Skald commiserated.

When neither of it's companions responded, the Gnoll spoke again, studying a long, slender leg bone already stripped clean of meat with heavy disgust. "Wanna go back to clan, have warm pelts to sleep on, not hard ground. Not cold outside. Not deer."

Skald sympathised.

"Griffank sounds like human." one of the other Gnolls spoke up, and this time they all sneezed laughter, eternal grins jacking up slightly at the corners. " 'No want cold, no want stringy meat, no want die! Please, please!'"

"Well," said another, startling Skald with it's articulation, "for my part, I would rather have _gnome _tonight than deer. A particular gnome, in fact." The bag at it's side quivered slightly.

Instantly uneasy, Skald shuffled back slightly into the gloom of the branches, out of sight. Gnolls were often bad enough; _smart _Gnolls were another thing entirely. _Never trust a creature that can think for itself when others of it's kind need help knowing which end to put food into. _

The Gnoll that had spoken was larger than the others, thick ropes of muscle forming massive arms covered with thick, bristly dark fur that was patchy in places with scar tissue. The fur on it's broad chest was stiff with dried blood, and Skald now realised that the old scent in the air he thought must have come from their meal was instead emanating from the creatures itself. The Gnoll leaned forward across the fire and jabbed a gnarled finger tipped with a vicious looking talon in Griffank's direction. "I don't know about you, but I am less than eager to return to any amount of warm pelts -- even warmer females -- when I don't have anything to report."

"Maybe go kill other humans, bring them back instead?" suggested Griffank, then flinched when the larger turned a baleful gaze on him.

"Not everyone is as stupid as to count the taste of meat as sweet as the taste of victory." the larger responded.

"Kanesh agree with Gravit." said the other Gnoll, hoping to curry favour, although he was largely ignored.

"There is also," Gravit went on, rummaging in the sack now, which had begun to kick frantically, a curious muffled wail coming from within, "the matter of what to do with this."

And he hauled a trembling, pale, horrified looking gnome into the air above the fire.

The other Gnolls immediately hooted with wolfish laughter as Gravit held the creature at arm's length, lazily enduring the struggles and plaintive kicks. The gnome was male, garbed in an extremely rumpled and ripped tunic of dark green and black, and his sleek black hair stood up in matted corkscrews with sweat. He looked bruised and scratched all over, from the tip of his long nose to the soles of his bootless feet. "Un . . . un_hand_ . . . " he panted, then bellowed when one of the other creatures jabbed a cruel, ragged talon painfully into his back.

"Not plump enough to roast. Stew, maybe?"

"Now, really," the gnome said, but with an air of defeat as he allowed himself to hang slack, "I don't think there's any need for such hostilities. I have a rather hefty parcel of travel rations in my pack that you are welcome to partake of." He had a somber, heavily lined face that was utterly unremarkable save for the bright intelligence in his small dark eyes. He looked like someone who was quite used to being stepped on.

"Not anymore, you don't." Gravit said, and Griffank solemnly waved what looked to be the tattered remains of a common traveller's pack before jutting his formidable jaws through a large tear in an obscene grin.

The small bit of courage that seemed to have been sustaining the gnome thus far abruptly gave out, and it seemed to Skald that he shrank in on himself, eyes dimming. "Oh. I see. I suppose it would hardly do me any good to mention that I _really _did not intend to interrupt your hunting escapade earlier."

"Hardly." Gravity agreed, dryly.

"And of course," the gnome went on, in an even more despondent tone, "it would do little good for me to tell you I am on my way to participate in a study in temporal magical energy flow in Waterdeep."

"I'm certain they can get along without you."

"Yes." the gnome heaved a tremendous sigh, his eyes suddenly watery with self-pity. "That's the worst part. They will."

Feeling sorry for the gnome, but unwilling to involve himself, Skald began to make his way back into the cover of the branches where he could easily scale unseen down the trunk of the tree and report back. The Gnolls had spoken of gnomes, creatures with which Skald had little experience, and if they were preoccupied with either extracting revenge or cooking, they were less likely to involve themselves in disturbing the hunt for the elf.

_Of course, _he thought, claws clutching at the trunk of the tree as he gazed downward at the spectacle of gnolls and gnome below, _the elf WERE here, she'd probably all wanna go and save him or somethin'. It's always somethin' with her. Never just wantsta go and get a sandwich . . . always gotta save the world._

From below, one of the Gnolls made a frighteningly eager sound between a yelp and a laugh, and Skald paused guiltily as he heard the gnome -- _what kinda stupid idjit goes and runs into Gnolls anyways? _-- moan with fright and despair. "Then I suppose there's only one thing left to do." Gravit said, and this time he sounded amused.

And then the forest exploded with light.

Shrieking and sounding for all the world like a rabbit with a foot caught in a snare, Skald tumbled backwards off his perch, thrashing wildly as he fell. His eyes were more sensitive than most creatures, and the light had been like a supernova of pain in his brain. He hit the ground, twigs and leaves giving way beneath him, and uttered another shrill scream as one wing crumpled painfully underneath him. He whined shrilly, completely consumed by the aches in his body although he had been through worse at the hands of Heurodis; for a creature with the attention span of a puppy who had just succeeded in getting it's legs underneath it properly for the first time, the last agony was always the greatest.

When he managed to blink away the worst of the light, however, any lingering pain was completely forgotten in the promise of greater sufferance that grinned above him.

"Hello, small mammal." Gravit said in a voice surprisingly like a purr. The circle of Gnolls was like an enclosure of rank fur, of blades and grinning teeth around him, the gnome looking down in sombre sympathy dangling limp in the grip of Gravit's free hand. As he reached downwards, Skald saw the lingering glow of magical energies about the creature's broad, clawed fingers, and he squealed in alarm and tried to slither away on his back. The Gnoll's hand easily captured Skald's entire torso. "Did you really think you would be able to spy unnoticed?"

"You _fool_." Xanos hissed, crouching amidst the thorny bushes and suddenly suffused with a nearly all-consuming desire to bellow for the Gnolls to make a nice roast out of the flying frog and offer up anything amidst his own supplies to be used as cooking spices. His legs were beginning to cramp up from holding his position for so long, the soles of his feet alive with tiny prickles of pain, but he refused to move, refused to give away his position even though he suspected it had already been blown. He inhaled deeply the scent of the

"You may as well come out, half breed." The Gnoll's mocking, sneering voice carried through the night air, drowning out Skald's terrified squeaks. "I have been aware of you since you blundered near. Handy things for those clever enough to use them, alarm gyphs, wouldn't you say?"

Inwardly, Xanos cringed. He was willing to accept he had erred in coming as close as he had rather than bypassing the creatures the moment he'd seen a glimmer of light from their campfire; after all, stealth was hardly his area of expertise. But to think he had ignorantly passed over a magical ward and not noticed? Unthinkable. Especially given that he had suffered countless exercises under Drogan's teaching geared towards just such detection. He thought, perhaps, he would not be remiss if he were to place the blame solely on Twen.

After all, she was not here to object to it at the moment.

"You can keep the creature!" Xanos yelled aloud, ignoring Skald's shriek of indignant fear. "I have no use for it! Eat with Xanos's blessing!"

Or to object to that.

"Your generosity is great, half breed!" the Gnoll shouted, and Xanos cursed; the voice was nearer. These were creatures well suited to scavenging and creeping. He didn't doubt they were even now spreading out to flank him. "Perhaps your generosity extends towards telling me exactly what has been going on today? I've made my lair in these woods for many a season, and not once has a day been filled with as much oddness as this one."

The Gnoll's very eloquence, his conversational manner in those bestial tones, made Xanos extremely uneasy, and he shifted his weight slowly from one leg to another, quickly making an assessment of the situation. Although he was unarmed, he was confident in his strength; that much, at least, his monstrous heritage had been good for, and he flexed one massive bicep to reassure himself, the muscles hardening further when he clenched his hands into fists. In a one-on-one battle, he thought he might have been evenly matched with the clever beast. Against five, however, he felt an almost entirely unfamiliar twinge of doubt; he didn't want to have his life ended under a pile of snarling Gnolls, their jaws tearing tendon and flesh, fetid breath hot in his dying eyes.

While he had never entertained the notion of becoming a bard, Xanos had discovered from a very early age that his mind became remarkably creative whenever he felt particularily morbid.

"I have no idea what you're talking about." he said, loudly, hoping his voice would cover the sound as he sidled a step to his right. He had no idea how keen Gnoll hearing really was.

And then, suddenly, the eternally grinning face of one of them thrust it's way through the bushes in front of him, eyes bright and gleaming amidst glossy dark green leaves. "All the more unfortunate for you. I would have preferred some information, but bandying words before death only delays the inevitable."

The sudden appearance of the creature was shocking enough -- it had appeared close enough that Xanos could see the wetness of it's nose, the discolouration of it's teeth, and so quickly and soundlessly. But when it thrust two heavy forms into Xanos's chest, he fell backwards with a grunt, startled, the sudden hooting of delight all around him.

He didn't bother to try to figure out what had been pushed at him, although judging from the frantic, serpentine writhing and mewling, one was likely Skald. He was aware of a rushing sound coming towards him from all directions, and he instinctively rolled to one side, tossing Skald and the other unfamiliar burden in the opposite direction. Roots and twigs dug painfully into his back, and when he pushed himself to his feet, he immediately found himself choking under the weight of a burly, furred arm clenching tight around his throat. The Gnoll that held him howled brutally loudly in his ear, and his spine creaked painfully as the creature used it's own brute strength to bend him steadily backwards. A drop of hot saliva fell onto his neck, trickling down his chest beneath his collar.

Ever since the battle atop Undrentide, Xanos had been disoriented. The abrupt shift from titantic fight for life to being lost and seperated from the companions he had been with for so long had unbalanced him slightly, making him feel as though he was moving slightly slower than the rest of the world, or perhaps just standing outside the flow of things. Twen's disappearance had as much to do with it as anything else; he had grown used to her presence, to turning around to find someone to argue with, and not having someone to blame right now was perhaps the most frustrating thing -- knowing that the only person who had walked him into this mess had been himself.

The Gnoll's saliva, sliding now across his skin like some repulsive lover's caress as it panted eagerly in anticipation of the sound of a snapping spine, sparked a sudden and sickeningly powerful lurch of white-hot fury and indignation in his stomach, and with a snarl of his own he planted his feet solidly in the ground and shoved himself backwards, tossing back his head.

He felt the impact of his skull on the creature's head at the same moment as he felt a crumpling from within it's body pressed against him, and it let out a surprisingly human scream of agony. Instead of pitching backwards as Xanos had expected, he had driven himself backwards against a tree, pinning the Gnoll against it with his own considerable bulk. The arm fell away from his throat, and as he stepped away, he heard the thing crumple to the ground behind him, making the high-pitched, miserable _hnn-hnn-hnn _of a dying dog in agony.

Inhaling deeply through his bruised throat, Xanos heard the crunch of leaves beneath a foot behind him, and spun around. In the gloom, the Gnoll was nothing more than an indistinct mass of darkness flying towards him, save the gleam of wet fangs and lolling tongue, and he caught it in his arms as if in an embrace as it hit him, staggering under the weight and hissing in pain. Although it snapped ferociously at his face, blasting him with hot breath as he fought to hold it off with one hand and grapple with the other, Xanos thought he heard it giggling between it's maddened barks. One clawed, powerful hand scrabbled for a hold on Xanos's chest, and then the half-orc found himself unbalanced as he was shoved back over the body of the now-still Gnoll behind him, and his vision was abruptly filled with a bright red burst of light as the back of his head connected painfully with the trunk of the tree.

A shrill, insistent ringing filled not just his ears but his entire head as he fell over the fallen Gnoll's corpse, and it's surviving companion leered above him. It felt as though his head was drifting apart into two halves, and he thought distantly that the only reason he was perhaps not unconscious or even dead from the strength of the blow was the very thick-headedness for which both Drogan and Twen had chastised him for.

"Stupid greenskin." sneered the Gnoll, and it grasped the front of his tunic with one hand, lifting him onto his feet with only the slightest grunt of effort. It was panting with excitement, bloodlust dancing in it's dark eyes. "We pick your bones while you still alive. We drink your blood while you still scream." It lowered it's muzzle into Xanos's face. "Make you wish stupid greenskin father never steal flimsy human mother from village."

In spite of his pain, Xanos managed to sneer himself. "You have my heritage backwards, you reeking waste of flesh." And he covered the Gnoll's face above it's jaws with one hand.

The cantrip was a minor one, really, even as cantrips went, but this close the damage was shocking. Xanos smelled the strange, sickly tang of acid and burning fur in the air a second before the Gnoll released him and reeled backwards, howling in incoherent pain as it clawed at it's eyes, now little more than leaking fluid from empty sockets. And a second after that, Skald barrelled into it's face, and it's features were lost in the sudden beat of leathery wings and snapping, serpentine jaws. The Gnoll screamed again, and as Xanos quickly struggled to his feet, he saw the pseudodragon throw it's head back, a piece of unidentifiable meat and fur flying through the air.

_Two. Three left. _Xanos looked wildly around, trying to ignore how sick he felt, or the warm, wet sensation of something trickling down the back of his neck from where his head had met the tree. Something crashed blindly towards him, and though he braced himself for impact, it merely stumbled past him, swayed drunkenly for a moment, before crashing to the forest floor.

It took Xanos a moment to register the form of another fallen Gnoll, the hilt of a dagger protruding from the back of it's neck just below the base of it's skull.

Someone crowed in victory, managing to sound both relieved and frightened. And somewhere in the vicinity of around Xanos's knees. "Ha-ha! I'll not be your dinner tonight!"

With Skald still attached, the blinded Gnoll staggered backwards and finally succeeded in ripping the small creature off of it's face. Dangling from it's grip, however, Xanos saw Skald grin before his jaws gaped and a bright rose of flame suddenly blossomed before him, and the Gnoll shrieked from the intense heat.

In the brief flare of illumination, Xanos caught a glimpse of a wild-eyed and dishevelled looking gnome standing a few feet away -- and the retreating figures of two Gnolls. One looked back over it's shoulder and met his gaze; and, Xanos would have sworn, grinned. And then the light died out as the screaming ceased, and they vanished into the woods.

The third Gnoll lay on the forest floor between the others, and the stench of burnt and liquefied flesh and fur was beyond anything that Xanos had ever experienced, but he barely gave it more than a passing grimace. His mind was racing.

Was this forest, wherever it was, full of more creatures like that? Was the intelligent Gnoll the only one of it's kind? Were Twen and Deekin the oddness the creature had spoke of?

And was she -- were _they _-- already lifeless remains sprawled upon the ground, leaves scattered over their still faces?

_I've made my lair in these woods for many a season, and not once has a day been filled with as much oddness as this one._

Wearily, Xanos agreed.

A rustling brought his mind back to reality, and he felt the slight weight of Skald settle on his shoulder, small claws digging in for a firmer grip. For once, Xanos was far too tired to shrug him off. "I dunno about you," Skald rasped, "but I got fur in my teeth and bruises in places I didn't know I had. I'm beginnin' to think this whole adventurin' stuff is really for the birds."

"But you do it so well!" the voice that had spoken earlier enthused. It sounded much more cheerful than before, and a moment later, the woods were lit with the soft, comforting glow of a light cantrip, and Xanos found the gnome at his feet beaming up at him, face wrinkled in a smile. "Wonderful rescue, my friend, simply marvelous! To think that you should risk your lives for my own self, a complete stranger! Never have I seen such selfishness, even in the heroine of Neverwinter herself! I, Boddyknock Glinckle, am deeply in your debt!"

When the gnome bowed so deeply the tip of his long nose poked the earthen ground, Xanos exchanged a tired look with Skald. Gnomes and Gnolls. Wherever she was, in whatever condition, Twen had to be laughing at him.


End file.
